[CA] [CA11] Wind instrument not reading speed

[MarkXal]

Hello,

I just finished installing a E22079 wind transducer combined with a ST800 through hull transducer, which are connected to an ITC-5 and i70s display.
All devices were tested at home last fall and worked perfectly. The wind transducer was installed on the orizontal mast of the sailboat in the fall and left to winter there. This spring I raised the mast and completed the connections, and unfortunately I found out everything worked except the wind speed measurements. These were my observations:

_the yellow wire of the wind transducer was mistakenly plugged in the socket just under the correct spot on the ITC-5. This was corrected
_reading voltage with a multimeter on the yellow wire gives approximately 3.15Vdc, which varies slightly with time
_the cups of the wind transducer were turning as expected
_the red wire had 8Vdc and the black wire had 0vdc as expected.
_the ITC-5 shows wind speed measurement timeout, but no other errors

My question is, is there something I am missing, and if something is broken, what needs to be replaced?

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

Welcome to the Raymarine Forum MarkXal,

Upon reviewing this thread, the instrument repair technician recommended sending both the masthead transducer (leave cable in place within the mast) and the iTC-5 to Raymarine’s Product Repair Center to be bench checked / serviced.

[MarkXal]

We used an oscilloscope to diagnose the wind transducer and saw that it was not operating correctly, as it was not producing a square wave on the yellow wire. Thus the ITC-5 was innocent. We took it down from the mast and disassembled it.
There was water in the unit, and the optocoupler component used to detect revolutions in the anemometer had detatched from the PCB. We resoldered it in place and the system works perfectly now.

Not sure why it detatched, but I think that water got into the unit while it was stored horizontally, then froze during the winter and due to expansion it ripped the optocoupler off the board.

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

MarkXal,

Great job troubleshooting and repairing the wind transducer!

[MarkXal]

Does the manual specify that the transducer needs to be stored horizontally? Maybe a mention should get added, as I feel there is nothing preventing water from coming in when it is on its side.

[Chuck - Raymarine - Moderator]

Mark,

Was the boat's mast removed for the winter? If so, then it would indeed be considered a best practice to removed the masthead transducer from its base and to store it out of the weather. That said, the transducer's seals should prevent water intrusion.