Radar overlay won’t turn on

[Sparky Wire]

Thanks for choosing Furuno. Quality does matter particularly when at similar price points. Get a good location for the fluxgate and it can give you good service.

 

[Foulweather Jack]

So I had the opportunity to go out yesterday and calibrate the heading sensor. The only difficult part is that it is mounted in a part of the boat that is difficult to reach, requiring some disassembly to access. But in any case, the calibration process was straightforward: I simply followed the instructions on the manual

It appears that there is approximately 5-10 degrees of deviation on the heading sensor as compared to my magnetic compass.

This begs a few questions:

In order to correct the deviation, I’ve learned that I can do that by pressing buttons on the heading sensor itself (difficult to do because of its relative inaccessibility) or by correcting heading deviation on one of the “setup” menus on the touchscreen. For reasons of simplicity, I simply corrected for the deviation on the touchscreen, but I’m wondering: does it matter whether it’s done from the heading sensor or from the touchscreen (I suspect it doesn’t matter, but I’m not sure, hence my question)?

Which do I trust as accurate, the heading sensor, or my standard magnetic compass?

And if I trust the compass as the gold standard, do I need to somehow correct my compass for deviation?

I suspect this is all rather basic for many of you, but I’m trying my best to learn. I suspect a satellite compass may be in my future.

 

[gtstang462002]

Compasses as a whole are not actually pointing at true north, but magnetic north. Which actually shifts a little. Here on the east coast we are somewhere around a 10.5 degree difference between magnetic and true north. Charts are printed in true north and we have to actually do the declination change between the 2.

 

[Foulweather Jack]

Thanks, gtstang. I’m aware of the difference between magnetic and true north; what’s puzzling me is the difference between the observed “magnetic heading” on my heading sensor and the observed heading on my magnetic compass.

 

[Quitsa]

In fairness to the dealer, he’s mainly a Garmin guy. He wanted me to use Garmin products, I insisted on Furuno for quality issues and because that’s what I had on the boat previously. Yes, this is an annoyance, but this situation is largely a product of my ignorance and I’m just trying to learn from it and move forward. In a perfect world, I agree with you guys: the satellite compass would have been the better choice, and I still might go that route.

You can talk yourself into an SCX-20 pretty easily by viewing the GP330B and PG700 as backup systems.

By the way, I read The Wide, Wide Sea also. It is astonishing that he managed to achieve such accuracy of navigation with no more than a clock and a transit. We have it easy. As for the consequences of his "discovery" of the inhabitants of Hawaii and the various other places he visited, it's rather clear they would have been much better off if he and his crew had perished in a storm before spreading so much disease.