Garmin WAAS upgrades are beginning

Pacific Coast Avionics called me late last week to say that the process was taking off. We agreed that I would ship my Garmin 430 back to the factory on March 14th, it will be at Garmin for about two days then shipped back to PCA. PCA would then ship it to me.

I will have to get the new antenna installed, but otherwise the unit should slide back into the tray without issue.

I will be $1500 poorer.

Bruce
N297NW

And you will have glidepath on all RNAV LPV approaches in the US. Having a glidepath to provide for a stabilized approach is a major factor in reducing accidents. Will it also provide glidepath on RNAV LNAV and LNAV/VNAV approaches as the 480 does?

I got the GNS-430W back and installed

Garmin promised a turn around time of only a couple days and amazingly enough they were right. They had to ship it to the company I bought it from (Pacific Coast Avionics in my case) and then PCA shipped it onward to me. Total time out of the airplane was 10 days.

Total cost: Upgrade: $1500
Shipping to: $95 (2 days, Fedex fully insured)
Return: $30
TNC adaptor: $13

The instructions from Garmin say that the GPS antenna cable needs to be RG-400 with a maximum length of 13'. The connection on the new antenna is TNC rather than BNC thus the need for the adaptor (or a new TNC end for your antenna cable).

The unit comes back with all of the default settings (8.33KHz radio spacing, time set to UTC, all the ARINC and serial outputs off etc.)

You get a new datacard with the latest Jepp data. You also get a new terrain card (but that may only be because my unit had the terrain update in it).

I have only flown the airplane for an hour since the upgrade but so far I am very impressed. The update rate on the map is so much nicer than before. Also distances are displayed to the hundredths of a mile (9.07 miles) and it is very cool to see the distance data being updated continuously.

Map scrolling which used to cause a few second delay when you move the cursor off screen is now instantaneous.

I have yet to try an LPV approach (I have to find one in my area first). I am not sure whether Jepp is going to charge me more for my updates with the extra approaches (let's hope not).

I also sent my TruTrak Digiflight IIVSG back to them while the Garmin was in the shop. I had version 2.18 of the firmware in the autopilot and they updated it to 2.22. They told me that they had made several changes to improve altitude holding (though I thought it was rock solid before). The only difference I could find was the display has changed from black words on a grayish background to yellow words on a darker gray background.

Bruce
RV-8
N297NW

Try to get your old nav-data card back-you can sell it on ebay.

I have now flown about three hours behind the GNS-430W

Love the update rate (zooming and scrolling the map).

Still trying to figure out which is more accurate GPS altitude or baro altitude. My baro was inspected six months ago but it always seems to be different from the GPS derived altitude by about 80 feet (always the baro lower than the GPS). Maybe time to have my avionics shop re-check the altimeter.

The GS on GPS approaches is awesome. It is almost like cheating...

I flew several GPS LNAV+V approaches and it was like flying an ILS except the LOC/GS needles are always rock steady (which in not necessarily the case on some ILS's I have flown).

This upgrade is slicker than snot.

bruce
N297NW