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Garmin Pilot bluetooth ADS-B cycling on/off

jeffsvan

Well Known Member
Garmin Pilot on Ipad 11 pro.
Connected Bluetooth to GDL-39-3D
Antenna.

GDL-39 is hardwired to Aera 660

Aera 660 is also connected Bluetooth to IPad
To transfer flight plan.

Like a clock, every 15 seconds on the ipad only, the two air Connection icons turn red for one second,
And Traffic disappears. Then a second later traffic re-appears, works normally for another 15 seconds. Repeats over and over.

Any ideas?
 

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I had the same thing happening with an Aera 760 bluetoothed to a Garmin GTR345 transponder.

I deleted all the Bluetooth devices from the GTR345 and reconnected and problem was solved.

Hope this helps
 
I also (still) have this problem. I first reported it to Garmin in 2019 and continued to report it with each new software update for about two years and then I gave up. The response from Garmin was always "the engineers have been unable to duplicate it in house".

Some other details I submitted to Garmin:

iPad Pro 10.5 ios v12.3.1 (this issue also seen with earlier versions)
Garmin Pilot v9.4.6 (this issue also seen with earlier versions)
GDL-39’s v4.81

other notes:
1) I have two GDL-39’s, one in the airplane and one at home. I see the exact same behavior with both of them.
2) I also have an older (Gen4) iPad which has ios 10.3.3 and Garmin Pilot v9.4.2 and have observed the following:

a) when the old iPad is connected to the GDL-39 by itself, it does NOT have this problem.
b) when I have both the old iPad and Pro 10.5 connected to the GDL-39, I do NOT see this problem on either iPad.
c) when I turn off the old iPad the problem returns to the Pro 10.5 within a few minutes.
 
Update 7/26/2022

UPDATE:

So I upgraded from the iPad Pro 11 inch 2020 model to the iPad Pro 12.9 inch M1 chip model year 2021 and the same problem persists.

I am thinking its in the software/ GDL-39 3D.

Maybe GARMIN G3xpert can chime in or offer help?
 
There is no doubt in my mind that this is a GDL-39 bug, and an easy one to demonstrate.

I will reiterate that this bug is only seen when the GDL-39 has less than two Bluetooth devices connected. As soon as a second device connects, even if that device is not actively running Garmin Pilot, the problem goes away. As soon as you disconnect the second device, the problem returns.
 
Garmin Problem still persists

Problem still.persists for me.

Can we somehow elevate this to the Garmin Rep that posts on here?
 
Hmmm ... I had something similar happen to me for the first time yesterday on an Aera 660 being fed by a GDL 50. ADS-B cycled on/off many times during the flight, as noted by traffic disappearing and reappearing on the Traffic Page. I thought it might have been a fluke, since it was the first time I've had it happen. And this was not the first flight since I updated the firmware to the latest versions (noted below).

And the Aera 660 is not displaying (fire) TFRs either, even though ForeFlight, being fed by the same GDL 50, does show the fire TFRs. Maybe other type TFRs also don’t show, but I don’t know. I do receive weather and traffic on the Aera 660, but no (fire) TFRs. This has been occurring for awhile now, not just yesterday, and not just with the latest firmware. I believe the latest firmware updates were supposed to fix some TFR issues.

The Aera 660 (v3.83) and the GDL 50 (v2.19) have the latest firmware updates.
 
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Does anyone have any update on this ongoing issue?
It drives me crazy to see the traffic disappear and reappear from the screen.
 
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Have you had any correspondence directly with Garmin? For a while I was emailing their support on this and they always responded. They blew me off but at least they responded.

Also, have you tried the mitigation method I mentioned in an earlier post to have more than one device bluetooth connected (the hardwire does not count) to the GDL-39? This is what I do to make the system useable.
 
I am going to try that idea this week. I didn't think I had a second blue tooth device, and then I remember I have the Garmin APP on my cell phone -would probably work as the second device. Will try to connect to that.
 
The second device does not need to be running an app, it just needs to be connected to the GDL-39 via bluetooth.

This problem did not (and still does not) occur with my retired iPad (Gen4). I only started seeing it when I upgraded to an iPad Pro 10.5. There is something about the newer generation Apple bluetooth that has become incompatible with the GDL-39.
 
iPad Incompatibility

The second device does not need to be running an app, it just needs to be connected to the GDL-39 via bluetooth.

This problem did not (and still does not) occur with my retired iPad (Gen4). I only started seeing it when I upgraded to an iPad Pro 10.5. There is something about the newer generation Apple bluetooth that has become incompatible with the GDL-39.

This is an interesting piece of information. We will pick this up and see if we are able to recreate it on our bench this coming week. We will keep you posted with what we find and what the next steps are.

Thanks,

Justin
 
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