Updating a Ray 240 VHF to Ray 260 VHF

[Art]

Will the Ray 260 VHF connected via STng eliminate our two major problems with the Ray240 connected to ST1 via ST1 to STng converter:

1. Key beep must be on or the VHF channel will randomly change to CH16, this was a software glitch reported in the raymarine.ning forum

2. Although the Ray 240 is powered on first to alert the STng network that a legacy device is present as reported by the Raymarine Moderator, our experience is that the position updates do eventually stop. We find that when sailing all day and then setting anchor, the Ray 240 VHF NO FIX alarm will sound sometime after midnight, of course jolting one awake to check for a dragging anchor. The only way to restore position updates is to shut off the network and radio and the restart.

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

Welcome to the Raymarine Forum Art,

The first problem reported may result from a power transient resulting from failure to properly isolate the marine electronics. Please click here to view a FAQ addressing this subject. Should the problem not be the result of power transients, then it may be indicative of a failing VHF radio handset or possibly a failure within the base station itself. Should this problem be the result of power transients, then replacement of the VHF radio would not correct this problem.

The second problem has been previously identified, and the solution was to interface the VHF radio to a NMEA 0183 rather than SeaTalk source of GPS data should this problem be encountered. The Ray260 VHF features a SeaTalkng rather than a SeaTalk communications interface, permitting it to be interfaced to the SeaTalkng backbone without need for a SeaTalk to SeaTalkng Converter. Unless the reported problem was resulting from low GPS signal strength or power transient causing the marine electronics to restart, this problem would be corrected through replacement of the VHF radio or interfacing the Ray240 to a NMEA 0183 source of GPS data.

[Art]

Chuck, Thank you for the reply. You did answer my questions on the Ray260. FYI, I have included below the note from the Raymarine Moderator concerning the Ray 240 software glitch. We did switch the "Key Beep" back on and the problem went away. That was after sending the radio and handsets back to Raymarine Tech Support for testing and confirming that our power supply to the Ray 240 was working just fine without dropout.

Reply by Moderator - Raymarine, US on September 12, 2013 at 9:04am

Art,

Today, we received the following additional information on the Ray240 symptoms that you have reported:

Ray240/E Resetting to CH16:

Raymarine has identified an intermittent issue in v2.29 software of the Ray240 where you may experience the channel set jumping from your current channel back to CH16 without warning. We have noticed this issue only appears when certain conditions are met:

Having Private Channels loaded into the Transceiver (e.g. M1 & M2)
Have the GPS Lat/Lon information shown on screen, and the Radio must be receiving Valid GPS information.
The Handset Key Beep must be turned off.

When you have the Ray240/E configured with the above conditions met, you may well see the reset occur.

If you do experience this issue, we recommend you turn the “key beep” back on again which seems to prevent the fault symptoms from occurring.

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

You're welcome.