Hi,
First post to the forum and I’ll start with apologies for the length of this note. I’m attempting to put together a bit of a hybrid. We have two boats with Raymarine electronic gear. The one I’m writing about has a pristine, fully functional and cosmetically perfect Pathfinder radar/plotter (RL80C+), L1260+ plotter/sounder and a ST6001+ autopilot. I want to add an AIS transponder and have read all the posts here about why that's a problem so we are adding standalone equipment. We only have room for two displays and I love my Raymarine radar. It works flawlessly so am reluctant to retire the entire system. Since my current gear will not support AIS my plan is to retire the L1260+ and replace it with a computer monitor driven by a micro PC running Rose Point Coastal Explorer. It’s my preference to drive the ST6000+ using the PC and will therefore need to feed the AP course computer NMEA 0183 sentences from the PC to do so. The literature I have appears to so how to make that happen.
Here’s my question. Can I configure the RL80C+ as a backup source to drive the ST6000+? Can I leave the SeaTalk cable in place or do I need to isolate the two sources of autopilot data (PC and RL80C+) with a selector switch? Your thoughts and guidance are appreciated.
Greg Lee
Huntington Beach, CA
First post to the forum and I’ll start with apologies for the length of this note. I’m attempting to put together a bit of a hybrid. We have two boats with Raymarine electronic gear. The one I’m writing about has a pristine, fully functional and cosmetically perfect Pathfinder radar/plotter (RL80C+), L1260+ plotter/sounder and a ST6001+ autopilot. I want to add an AIS transponder and have read all the posts here about why that's a problem so we are adding standalone equipment. We only have room for two displays and I love my Raymarine radar. It works flawlessly so am reluctant to retire the entire system. Since my current gear will not support AIS my plan is to retire the L1260+ and replace it with a computer monitor driven by a micro PC running Rose Point Coastal Explorer. It’s my preference to drive the ST6000+ using the PC and will therefore need to feed the AP course computer NMEA 0183 sentences from the PC to do so. The literature I have appears to so how to make that happen.
Here’s my question. Can I configure the RL80C+ as a backup source to drive the ST6000+? Can I leave the SeaTalk cable in place or do I need to isolate the two sources of autopilot data (PC and RL80C+) with a selector switch? Your thoughts and guidance are appreciated.
Greg Lee
Huntington Beach, CA