430W GPS Antenna

Well from my reading I think I have a defective antenna. I have been flying for over a year now and all was good until a few weeks ago when I lost all satellites on my 430W this seemed to be isolated but now it occurs more often.

Now when I loose the 430W I loose the 496 as well, all satellites show no signal then after a while it will come back. Yesterday the they went out and did not come back until I started the descent. Oddly the GDL39 still pushed good position data to my iPad Mini.

From reading it seems there was a bad batch of these antenna and some internal circuit board delaminates and can cause these symptoms. Anyone have any experience with dealing with this with Garmin? I want to get any info I can before I start the process.

Cheers

I had problems that sounds very similiar with my 430W. It was too far out of warranty for Garmin to cover it. I replaced the antenna over a year ago and it has worked fine since.

Corrosion

I have experienced this at work with our 530's and corrosion under the antenna mount was the culprit.

same here

I had to replace the 530W GPS antenna in my RV10 when after about 18 months of use it began to drop out on occasion. Talked with Garmin and they suggested taking it to a dealer for testing. But since it did not happen on every flight, I decided to replace the GPS antenna. No problems since. They apparently can go bad.

GPS antennas are "active" units which means they have amplifiers in them, and like all electronics, they are prone to failure.

Age

We'll I have owned the antenna since 2009 (new) but I have only flown with it just over a year. I sure hope the replacement lasts longer.

Cheers

Hello everyone,
My apologies for the delay in reviewing this and providing any guidance as I've been out of town recently.
We've done a great deal of testing with the antenna manufacturer on this issue. We did issue a service communique on this in 2010 when this issue was first discovered identifying a process in an effort to identify if it is the problem or not. In short what happens when this problem occurs, since the antenna is tuned to the 1.575GHz of the GPS system when it fails in this manner it turns into an transmitter and oscillates at this frequency thus preventing any GPS units on board the aircraft from receiving. I can assure you there is no internal board problem with de-lamination.
We do receive each of these antennas back when it's identified as possibly this problem and our engineering staff is going through great lengths to identify this, regrettably we've not been able to duplicate this in the majority of the antenna when they're received. However in the ones that have been duplicated we've found that the radome in them are cracked around the mounting holes. With these antennas once we induce moisture this problem occurs. After some discussions with the manufacturer it has been noted that the antennas are not to be mounted with more the 15 inch pounds of torque. This is a very low amount and an adult male can easily exceed this with a simple turn of the wrist as this is less then 1 foot pound of torque. At this point and fear our suspicion is this problem is being induced due to improper use of tools or mounting hardware. We're working to increase the visibility of these specs with the documentation supplied with the antenna.
Garmin has been very proactive with supporting these problems and have been replacing these antennas through our dealer network at no charge, however should the antenna be out of warranty any labor charges are not reimbursed.

I hope this explanation helps in providing more data on this issue. Should you have any other questions please feel free to contact me.

Best Regards,