Something you may have missed in the news, color me in agreement, and an obvious but seemingly overlooked fact...
Here's an impressive self-steering gear that you might want to take a look at.
It's actually a quite simple but elegant design not all that dissimilar to some other vanes from way back when. Of course, as designed it is a direct vane to tiller sort so not quite up to the rigors of most cruising boats unless said cruising boats are perfectly balanced and have a very "light" steering. Still for its price it is not a bad starting point if you have a transom mounted rudder (or are thinking of building an auxiliary rudder) which can be controlled with a trim tab.
Crafty folks will no doubt see just how simple the open source design vane is and the possibilities of doing a DIY clone approach which would appear nearly tyro-proof.
At a cost of between $200-$300 or so it really should make you wonder just why the Auto-Helm upper vane only unit costs an astounding $2350.
Listening to Midnight Oil
So it goes...
