Wind instrument - bird problems

Alan Gomes

Sustaining Partner
So most of the problem with the Garmin G-Wind is they did not properly terminate the RS485 bus at the GND-10. The underlying up/down mast is the old school Nexus network, from when the instruments were made by Silva.

Anyhow, the fix is pretty simple. Add a 120ohm resistor across the data pair down at the gnd-10 end (or close by) and the unit becomes extremely reliable.

We actually figured this one out trying to troubleshoot things, and noticed that it was stable/reliable when we had our old Nexus Wind head unit connected to the nexus side, and unstable with it disconnected. Put two and two together (I'm a computer Engineer old enough to remember termination resistors) and boom. Done. It's now worked reliably for 2 years, except for a brief period when the up-mast connector got filled with bird crap.
Did you let the techs at Garmin know?
 

Alan Gomes

Sustaining Partner
Yeah, we had been troubleshooting it with them, they even swapped out our unit under warranty. We let them know, but I guess Garmin support is going to be Garmin support, and not actually learn anything.
Well, you did what you could do.
 

Pete the Cat

Sustaining Member
We may not have the same product. T101?

And I'm not sure they fit, since not yet installed. About $20, various vendors.

OK. I have a Ray Marine (formerly Tack Tik) wireless anemometer transducer that broke a cup off---probably a boatyard mess up. I just took the mast down for the winter and replaced the cups. . The replacement cups and windvane both are held in place with a tiny screw and the parts cost $60 on Amazon. I had to replace the whole transducer unit on another boat and the part was $320 and the cup and vane were held in by a screw on that one. The picture of the part you show here does not look like it would work on the units I have repaired. I am not sure what is going on here....I do not see how you would attach the one in the advertisement.
 
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