[fer@fer]

Graham,

I''m having the same question as Peter.

I believe he wants his radar to read absolute bearings instead of relative. Tipically all boats (with the exception of fancy new equipped) have the radar in the navigation area. So when the navigator wants to communicate a target bearing to the helm, he will need to add the relative bearing to the heading. After doing so, and making some other simple calculations, he will shout: tanker at 223º, 4 miles, heading 120, 12 knt. The helman will inmediately understand that 223º is the absolute bearing of the tanker, because the navigator has added their own heading. He will ask any of the crew by his side to look downstairs for a calcuator, and to deduct their heading to 223º, and remain watching for the tanker to appear behind the genoa within next 4 minutes.

Now, if you happen to have a gyro interfaced with the radar, it will give you the absolute bearing and rumblines, so it will allow the navigator to make lesser calculations. However, if the navigator continue to provide absolute bearing to the helmsman, he will still need to make calculations. I will change the navigator, unless he is my wife, which I rather preferred her downstairs.

So the 1 second updates is quite enough for this purpose , I believe. The ST 6000 Instalation & Operation instructions do not cover this issue. However the Furuno 1830 (1992 vintage) indicates that a gyro can be intefaced in a slot, after connecting a gyro converter (?!)

So probably Peter will need to look into his radar instructions or booklets to find out more.

In any case the question wether the Autohelm flux can be interfaced is still unanswered yet. Sorry & Rgards

Fernando