ComNav Commander P2 - Finalizing Compass Setup and Checks

ComNav Commander P2 & P2VS Installation & Operation Setting Up
Document PN 29010074 V4.1 - 102 -
Magnetic Sensor
There is an alternative calibration procedure, for Magnetic Sensors only:
1) Power up the autopilot in the Dockside Setup menu.
2) Select Compass Setup & press the
F
F
n
n button.
3) Highlight “Analog Compass” and set the parameter to “Mag”; press the Fn button
4) After the autopilot has auto-detected the compass, it will ask you if you want to “Set North
Now?”. Press the
S
S
T
T
A
A
R
R
B
B
O
O
A
A
R
R
D
D button.
Manually steer the boat so that it is pointing to Magnetic North. Hold it on that heading
and push the
F
F
n
n button. The autopilot will store the current heading and reference it as
000° Magnetic, and then automatically return to the Compass Configuration menu.
5) Highlight “Exit” and then press the
F
F
n
n button to return to the Dockside Setup menu.
6) Exit the Dockside Setup menu. After a brief pause the autopilot will restart and
automatically go into STANDBY mode.
Compass Setup – Final Steps
At this point, the entire Compass Setup procedure is complete.
All the compass settings & compensation/calibration values will be retained when the
autopilot is turned off.
You should record all compass selections & settings, in the Settings chapter at the back of
this manual.
It should not be necessary to re-compensate or re-calibrate any of your compasses again,
unless the electrical/magnetic environment on your boat changes substantially. Examples of
when that might be so are if you add some new piece of electronic equipment, or add new
machinery, and so on. You should also re-do compass setup if you take your boat a long
way away from where you did the setup just now – say, more than 10° of Latitude – or to an
area where the local Magnetic Deviation is known to be different (say, where there are a lot of
submerged wrecks).
And it is also a good idea to check all the compasses on your boat, for accuracy in all
directions, on a regular basis – say perhaps once or twice a year – and before setting off on a
long voyage.
A good way to do a quick check is with any of the traditional “box the compass” methods
which even a novice boater learns almost right away:
• Find some convenient ranges which have good cuts between them, and steer back &
forth along them.
• Steer various straight Tracks, in as many directions as possible, between pairs of
charted objects.
• Determine the CMG between various plotted positions (with GPS, or with two or
three-bearing LOP fixes with a good Pelorus or hand-bearing compass, etc.) on your
paper charts.
You might even want to do a box-the-compass check right now, simply as a final “sanity”
check of the compass setup you just did!