Ronnie, first THANKS! After all the people that looked at this post you are the first one trying to help.
The issues I am referring to are bugs in the B&G software:
Polar mode Bug: for example let’s say we are sailing with a 348 TWD, and you engage the pilot to sail to polar, the pilot display displays 348 as the target TWA (while non-pilot display displays the correct target wind angle) then you ask the pilot to tack and it does not tack in polar mode, as a matter of fact you have to shut the entire system for it to tack in either TWA or AWA mode again.
Like most pilots, B&G use heading (or course if available) and TWD or TWA or AWA (or various combinations depending on the conditions) when sailing to wind mode; using heading as the main reference, and using TWD/TWA/AWA as the variable to adjust the pilot’s course or heading. In the B&G you have variables that allow to adjust how often the wind variable gets to influence the pilots course-heading.
Tacking bug: the pilot keeps track of the wind angle and heading while tacking and gybing, so it “knows” how much rudder to use, the problem with B&G’s logic is that as the amount of rudder applied is proportional to the difference of AWA, so as the wind angle approaches 0, the amount of rudder decreases (there are few more variables that affect the behavior) so if the boat does not have enough inertia to overcome the lack of rudder past 20-25 degrees AWA on the opposite tack the boat stops right dead upwind. So if you want the boat to tack you have to backfill your jib until the jib forces the boat past the 20-25 degrees AWA. This is a very ineffective way to tack, since the boat gets slowed down, and makes the single handed skipper work extra hard since now it has to tack a backfilled jib instead of a not loaded jib.
Bad steering: while sailing in either TWA or AWA (although it is advertised by B&G that you can sail in Polar/ Target Wind Angle the pilot does not) some of the same logic issues in the tacking algorithm affect the performance. And against all logic increasing the “gain” makes things worse because at the beginning the pilot makes small corrections that keep the boat on “track” but if you get a cross wave the pilot tries to correct with bigger and bigger rudder movement which leads to a broach, while the same issue occurs while sailing upwind or reaching the symptoms are less noticeable. If you compare the pilots behavior sailing upwind, downwind and reaching by using, rudder angle, wind angle, yaw-pitch-roll rates they are pretty similar.
IMHO, there is something really wrong with B&G’s logic. You might ask, l if it is that bad how come the big guns love the B&G pilot? My answer will be, they do not run the same software (I have the GA and the BTG software), there are a 5 different matrixes that can be changed plus over 100 variables that can be fine-tuned and they receive a lot more support than a regular joe like myself.
What I am looking for is for other B&G owners so I can start a peer brain dump and see if we can all come with a workaround to these issues and bugs, and “pressure” B&G to get these fixed.
I could post my pilot’s settings if anyone thinks that they can help.
i have a B&G 3000 motion, with the KVH (rebranded for B&G) compass, 2 ACPS (only one connected). the software in the motion CPU is 2, the pilot is 2.02, the GFDs and GPDs are in version 1.8. in other words the latest and greatest from B&G.
Astolfo
