chrispratt
Well Known Member
For those readers who fly with a Garmin Aera 660, this might of interest.
I’ve noticed on my last few flights that the battery condition indicator on my Aera 660 shows the battery is only half-charged at the end of a flight (see pic below).
The first time I noticed this was after a short flight so I thought maybe it needed more time to charge, but after my 1.6 hour flight yesterday the indicator looked the same at one-half charge.
I took the unit home and tried charging there but it wouldn’t budge past the half-charged state.
A check of the 660 pilot manual indicated that the battery might need to be re-conditioned by draining it all the way and recharging from there. So, I left the 660 on until the battery was fully drained (took about an hour). I then used the supplied USB connector and plugged it in overnight from one of my Apple chargers. It took several hours (the manual says four hours but I think that might be when using a car charger type source (12V) versus my Apple charger which I think is lower voltage 5V). At any rate it showed full charge in the morning (photo below), so I think that worked.
If you use a 660 and haven’t checked lately, you might want to check the condition of the battery so you don’t get caught with a dead battery on a trip.
Note for [email protected] if you see this: While waiting for the unit to recharge I cruised the Garmin site to try find a replacement battery and what it might cost. None of my searching on Garmin.com found anything relating to a lithium-ion replacement battery even though I was searching using the part number described in the Garmin manual (go to http://buy.garmin.com 010-11654-03) . Maybe there’s a special site for this? I’d love to know for future reference.
FYI: I also searched Amazon, Ebay, and a few other sites from Google Search and while they all showed a result for the battery, all sites said they were “out of stock” or “out of production”. I hope this is just a “supply chain” issue and not permanent. Prices on the non-Garmin sites ranged from $26 to $96 for a replacement unit (Ebay was the $96 site.)
Cheers.
Chris
I’ve noticed on my last few flights that the battery condition indicator on my Aera 660 shows the battery is only half-charged at the end of a flight (see pic below).
The first time I noticed this was after a short flight so I thought maybe it needed more time to charge, but after my 1.6 hour flight yesterday the indicator looked the same at one-half charge.
I took the unit home and tried charging there but it wouldn’t budge past the half-charged state.
A check of the 660 pilot manual indicated that the battery might need to be re-conditioned by draining it all the way and recharging from there. So, I left the 660 on until the battery was fully drained (took about an hour). I then used the supplied USB connector and plugged it in overnight from one of my Apple chargers. It took several hours (the manual says four hours but I think that might be when using a car charger type source (12V) versus my Apple charger which I think is lower voltage 5V). At any rate it showed full charge in the morning (photo below), so I think that worked.
If you use a 660 and haven’t checked lately, you might want to check the condition of the battery so you don’t get caught with a dead battery on a trip.
Note for [email protected] if you see this: While waiting for the unit to recharge I cruised the Garmin site to try find a replacement battery and what it might cost. None of my searching on Garmin.com found anything relating to a lithium-ion replacement battery even though I was searching using the part number described in the Garmin manual (go to http://buy.garmin.com 010-11654-03) . Maybe there’s a special site for this? I’d love to know for future reference.
FYI: I also searched Amazon, Ebay, and a few other sites from Google Search and while they all showed a result for the battery, all sites said they were “out of stock” or “out of production”. I hope this is just a “supply chain” issue and not permanent. Prices on the non-Garmin sites ranged from $26 to $96 for a replacement unit (Ebay was the $96 site.)
Cheers.
Chris