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430W started doing something weird!!!

Brantel

Brantel

Well Known Member
All of a sudden my 430W has started failing to dead reckoning mode about 10 minutes after I turn it on. Prior to this it locks on and displays the map page like normal. Once it goes int DR mode, the sat page shows no signals at all. In about 1 minute, it will slowly start to reaquire the sats. Once it is back, it runs fine for the rest of the flight.

I did some searching and it seems that this is a common issue but I have never seen this reported here. The other forums where people have reported it state that Garmin has been replacing antennas when this happens.

Anyone have or ever had this issue?

I think my warranty is short so I need decide what to do about it.....
 
I have it happen frequently when I get into a series of Aerobatic maneuvers, so I blame it on reception and blanking, the Old 430 seemed to be very happy doing Acro, and never did this, but the "W" seems to get airsick. I have not had it happen in normal flight.

Paul
 
The last two flights, first it happened on climb out wings level, second it happened taxiing to the run up area after being on for a few minutes prior to moving.

The thing is that it completely loses all signals and then in about a minute they start slowly coming back. Almost like clock work.
 
Garmin Aviation Email Support has replied to my request for support on this issue and has stated that most likely based on the symptoms that it is the WAAS antenna. I have emailed Stein to see how to proceed since he is my dealer, per Garmin's suggestion.

Will let you all know how it turns out.

I have since been looking at searches for this issue and have found dozens of similar reports on other forums. Seems that there might be an issue with these WAAS antennas that come with the 430W centered around a similar age that my unit fits into.
 
I had some of the same issues, Garmin sent me a new antenna thought all was good, went to Sun / Fun 430w dropped 8 times in 10hr of flying. Still not fixed!
 
Gps drop

We fought this for two years in a be58. In the end one of the gold pins in the TNC connector wasn't quite long enough and would drop signal when it felt like it. Make sure you only have connectors on each end and the pins are the perfect length. Garmin was no help.
Don
 
donoltman said:
We fought this for two years in a be58. In the end one of the gold pins in the TNC connector wasn't quite long enough and would drop signal when it felt like it. Make sure you only have connectors on each end and the pins are the perfect length. Garmin was no help.
Don
Click to expand...

This is a possibility but the symptoms do not really match a bad connection. It appears to be temperature related. From boot up to dropout takes about 10 minutes with the engine running (antenna under cowl, in front of firewall). After dropout, it takes about 1 minute and then the sats start to slowly come back. Once they are back, there are no issues for the remainder of the flight. Wiggling connectors, cables etc. has no effect on the signal.

If it were a bad connection, I would expect more erratic symptoms.

These things are suppose to be bullet proof. Goes to prove the fact that TSO's don't mean much....

The more I investigate, the more people I am finding that have had/have similar issues.
 
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Brantel said:
This is a possibility but the symptoms do not really match a bad connection. It appears to be temperature related. From boot up to dropout takes about 10 minutes with the engine running (antenna under cowl, in front of firewall). After dropout, it takes about 1 minute and then the sats start to slowly come back. Once they are back, there are no issues for the remainder of the flight. Wiggling connectors, cables etc. has no effect on the signal.

If it were a bad connection, I would expect more erratic symptoms.

These things are suppose to be bullet proof. Goes to prove the fact that TSO's don't mean much....

The more I investigate, the more people I am finding that have had/have similar issues.
Click to expand...

Ahhh....but remember that mounting it under the firewall is not encouraged nor recommended by Garmin - though it seems to work well for many, the antenna was designed to be on the outside of the airplane to work at it's full potential and reliability. Anytime you deviate significantly from the conditions which mfgr's recommend, it can be a **** shoot.

That being said, if there is a problem with the antenna, then we'll just get it replaced or fixed!

Cheers,
Stein
 
Stein,

You are the man...

Getting serial #'s for your guy tonight. Great service!

Strange thing about the reports of similar issues to mine are that most of em are in certified installs????? I duno.....:confused:
 
Brantel said:
Stein,

You are the man...

Getting serial #'s for your guy tonight. Great service!

Strange thing about the reports of similar issues to mine are that most of em are in certified installs????? I duno.....:confused:
Click to expand...

Sometimes antennas are bad, but by far and away the most common issues are with people either making the cables WAY to short, or not grounding the antenna, or not having a sufficient ground plane (like under cowls or wingtips or on glass airplanes), or bad coax cables with intermittent shorts, etc... It's a common problem that usually is caused by the installation, but not always. Sometimes things just get sick or break!

Cheers,
Stein
 
I have this exact same thing happen in my Cherokee from time to time. I will get a yellow "no GPS Signal" warning shortly after I start to taxi out to the runway. A quick power cycle remedies the situation and the signal will then remain solid for the rest of the flight. The antenna is mounted on top of the cabin.

All told it happens about 3 times a year to me.
 
civengpe said:
I have this exact same thing happen in my Cherokee from time to time. I will get a yellow "no GPS Signal" warning shortly after I start to taxi out to the runway. A quick power cycle remedies the situation and the signal will then remain solid for the rest of the flight. The antenna is mounted on top of the cabin.

All told it happens about 3 times a year to me.
Click to expand...

This description matches several of the same events I've had, and the timing of a few minutes after startup indicates to me it is some sort of software issue. It's happened to me at or on the way to the runup pad enough times (4 maybe?) where it is too coincidental to be a bad connection. It has happened on the take off roll as well.

Call me skeptical - but someone needs to explain the abundance of these events which seem to happen a few minutes after initial satellite lock.
 
Interesting, I have the same thing happen to my 430W....perhaps every flight. I never timed it but will on the next flight.

My assumption was that I did something wrong. With multiple reports of an apparently similar problem, maybe it is the unit.
 
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Ok Garmin guys....we know you are watching and we know that you guys most likely know about this issue or know someone in the lunchroom that does since it seems like a very common problem. 6 in this little tiny thread alone. Search Google and I find dozens of reports of similar issues on many forums.

How about filling us in on what Garmin has to say about it.....

I have faith that Stein and his crew will get me fixed up so I ain't worried about it at all from that standpoint, I would just like to know what the real root cause of the issue is and if I can do anything to prevent it.
 
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SteinAir said:
Sometimes antennas are bad, but by far and away the most common issues are with people either making the cables WAY to short, or not grounding the antenna, or not having a sufficient ground plane (like under cowls or wingtips or on glass airplanes), or bad coax cables with intermittent shorts, etc... It's a common problem that usually is caused by the installation, but not always. Sometimes things just get sick or break!
Click to expand...

Brian,

Stein did a good job of summarizing the issues typically found to be the root cause of persistent or intermittent loss of GPS signal.

As you probably know, we are working with Stein to resolve your issue and one aspect of this is to ensure that your antenna is working as designed, and is installed per the installation manual.

Thanks,
Steve
 
This exact issue has happened to me twice now. About 5-10 minutes into a flight I get the no GPS signal warning message, then a few minutes later it comes back and works for the rest of the flight. I have the required length coax, and the unit has worked flawlessly for almost 2 years before these two episodes. Not sure if these are isolated incidences, I will know more as I will be flying frequently in the near future.
 
g3xpert said:
Brian,

Stein did a good job of summarizing the issues typically found to be the root cause of persistent or intermittent loss of GPS signal.

As you probably know, we are working with Stein to resolve your issue and one aspect of this is to ensure that your antenna is working as designed, and is installed per the installation manual.

Thanks,
Steve
Click to expand...

Thanks Steve,

Stein and his folks are taking care of me.
 
This happened again today. Not sure exactly when after the 430W was turned on but approximately 15 minutes (during flight by then). After I noticed it, it locked on within a minute or so. I did not notice a loss of lock on the flight back after breakfast.
 
Garmin sent me a loaner to try but I have not used it yet.

The last three cold startup flights have not had any failures of my original unit.

So, either this is an intermittent issue and will pop up again in the future or all of my checking cables, connections, antenna mounts, antennas, etc has the issue resolved.

My luck is that as soon as I send the loaner back, it will pop up again!
 
Spoke too soon. Apparently the issue I am having is temp related. The prior three flights I spoke of where the issue did not occur were with ambient temps in the mid 80's.

Today and the prior flights where I have had issues were started with the ambient temp in the low 70's.

Today I had the same problem. 10-15 minutes after startup and about a mile from the runway outbound, Dead reckoning mode!

This time I had the sat status page up the entire time. Before the fault, I had almost all the sats at 70% or above in differential mode and solid Green.

When the fault happened, all the sats stayed the same signal but turned light blue, then the dead reckoning warning. For a few seconds everything stayed that way then all of a sudden everything turned Green again. Then I saw it do it again for a second or two. Then everything returned to normal and stayed that way for the rest of the flight.

I will now install the loaner and see if it does the same thing.
 
I flew last evening with the loaner unit from Garmin and did not experience any failures. I plan to fly a couple more flights with it before returning it.

If the loaner continues to perform flawlessly, then my unit is going back in for a warranty replacement of the GPS board.

I would like to say that the 1st layer of support by Stein and his team has been outstanding. I would also like to say that Garmin has been supporting me very well also indirectly through Stein. I did not even have to ask for the loaner, they just took it upon themselves to send it to me. So glad that I purchased my unit from SteinAir! I also appreciate Garmin's movement toward honestly acknowledging, marketing to and supporting the experimental/sport aviation crowd. This is a big paradigm shift for them but they are moving in the right direction quickly!
 
4 flights on the loaner and no failures. Looks like my unit is going in for a replacement of the GPS board.
 
GPS Signal Dropped in my 430

My 430 started to display "GPS signal lost" at least once a flight. Garmin said I needed a new antenna. The engine was also running a little rough at times. During a spark plug inspection I noticed a loose connection in the connector that was arcing to the plug. I repaired the connector and have not seen the signal lost display again after many hours of flying, and the engine is running smoother. Appearantly the high voltage arcing was interfering with the signal to the 430.
 
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Flew over 4 hours on a CC with the loaner with no issues. Mine is currently at Garmin having the GPS board replaced.
 
Flew all the way home for another 3.5hrs on the loaner and had no issues. Pretty sure the issue was inside my original box. Garmin will fix it up!
 
As a final follow up to close out this story....

Stein's folks have informed me that my original 430W is on its way back to me today repaired under warranty.

Garmin was able to confirm the failure of the GPS board and have repaired it and updated the firmware etc. Thanks to Garmin for being so helpful with the loaner and for getting it repaired quickly. Thanks to SteinAir for supporting their customers so well.

Other than about $140 in shipping and insurance charges, this has been a relatively painless process!
 
Brantel said:
As a final follow up to close out this story....

Stein's folks have informed me that my original 430W is on its way back to me today repaired under warranty.

Garmin was able to confirm the failure of the GPS board and have repaired it and updated the firmware etc. Thanks to Garmin for being so helpful with the loaner and for getting it repaired quickly. Thanks to SteinAir for supporting their customers so well.

Other than about $140 in shipping and insurance charges, this has been a relatively painless process!
Click to expand...

I say $140 and the cost of fuel for testing is hardly painless for some thing that ought to have been taken care of free of charge. But glad that it was fixed.
 
Bavafa said:
I say $140 and the cost of fuel for testing is hardly painless for some thing that ought to have been taken care of free of charge. But glad that it was fixed.
Click to expand...



Fuel was no factor since I would have flown anyway....

The shipping is due to the following:

Garmin shipped the loaner to me free
I had to ship my unit to Garmin $46
Garmin will only ship back to Stein since it is a certified box. That was free.
Stein ships it back to me, this is my responsibility $44
I have to ship the loaner back to Garmin $46

Insurance is the big cost in all of this.
 
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Brantel said:
Fuel was no factor since I would have flown anyway....

The shipping is due to the following:

Garmin shipped the loaner to me free
I had to ship my unit to Garmin $46
Garmin will only ship back to Stein since it is a certified box. That was free.
Stein ships it back to me, this is my responsibility $44
I have to ship the loaner back to Garmin $46

Insurance is the big cost in all of this.
Click to expand...

This all would have been a little cheaper had we not invoked the "new loaner" deal here and had multiple units zipping around the country, but we knew Brian had an important trip XC coming up, and that coupled with the fact that his unit was under warranty and given the symptoms, we all thought it probably the best way to handle it given the totality of the circumstances. Could it be better, for sure - but it's already much better than some other mfgr's will do under similar circumstances (props or engines or flap motors or fuel pumps or alternators or magnetos, or even other avionics).

Just my 2 cents as usual.

Cheers,
Stein
 
I agree, Stein and Garmin did what they thought best and I am happy with the outcome and that was their goal...

Thanks again to Stein and his folks and Garmin!

SteinAir said:
This all would have been a little cheaper had we not invoked the "new loaner" deal here and had multiple units zipping around the country, but we knew Brian had an important trip XC coming up, and that coupled with the fact that his unit was under warranty and given the symptoms, we all thought it probably the best way to handle it given the totality of the circumstances. Could it be better, for sure - but it's already much better than some other mfgr's will do under similar circumstances (props or engines or flap motors or fuel pumps or alternators or magnetos, or even other avionics).

Just my 2 cents as usual.

Cheers,
Stein
Click to expand...
 
There's been another thread about the fact that the "industry standard" in the avionics business seems to be that the buyer pays one-way shipping for warrantee returns.

Is this fair? IMHO no it is not, and in the future I will read the warrantee fine print carefully, and use it as part of my selection criterion. If enough people vote with their pocketbooks the manufacturers will take notice.
 
No go.....

First flight with my newly repaired 430w resulted in the first 30 minutes of flight with the unit going in and out of dead reckoning mode. This time every time the unit crashed, it caused my 796 to completely lose signal as well. I turned off the 430w and the 796 returned to normal. Back on and the 796 started losing all signal. That pretty much proved it was the 430w killing the signal on my 796. Prior to the repair, the 430w failures did not impact my Aera510 at all. I got the 796 since then so not sure if it would have impacted it before or not.

After the first flight of the day all was normal again for the rest of the day.

Keep in mind that I flew over 10 hours with the loaner with no issues at all using the original antenna all along.

I am at a loss and the symptoms don't make any sense. Stein is going to send me a new antenna and I will give that a try......

The net is riddled with reports of 430w antennas flaking out and jamming other gps signals. Not sure if this is my issue or not.

Kinda frustrating but I am trying to keep positive....
 
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Brantel,
No magic answers but here's part of my experience. Had the same dropouts. Checked coax cables-nothing noticable. Made sure unit was well seated. Before sending Garmin unit in for overhaul, John Stark (Stark Avionics) helped me get a new antenna at no cost.

My first flight I had the same dropouts with the new antenna.

However, the 12 flights subsequent have been fine with no 430w problems. I noticed you mentioned first flight only. Go up and try again and see if fixed. I don't know much about electronic innards but I wonder if it just took the 430w a little time to recalibrate internally for the satellites.

Tom Hanaway
 
Brantel said:
First flight with my newly repaired 430w resulted in the first 30 minutes of flight with the unit going in and out of dead reckoning mode. This time every time the unit crashed, it caused my 796 to completely lose signal as well. I turned off the 430w and the 796 returned to normal. Back on and the 796 started losing all signal. That pretty much proved it was the 430w killing the signal on my 796. Prior to the repair, the 430w failures did not impact my Aera510 at all. I got the 796 since then so not sure if it would have impacted it before or not.

After the first flight of the day all was normal again for the rest of the day.

Keep in mind that I flew over 10 hours with the loaner with no issues at all using the original antenna all along.

I am at a loss and the symptoms don't make any sense. Stein is going to send me a new antenna and I will give that a try......

The net is riddled with reports of 430w antennas flaking out and jamming other gps signals. Not sure if this is my issue or not.

Kinda frustrating but I am trying to keep positive....
Click to expand...

Yep, sounds familiar... Hence, my "good luck" comment earlier. Mine had not done it for maybe 25 hours, but did it last night. It was about 10 minutes into the flight. I turned to the satellite page and watched for about 5 or 10 minutes, with no indication of signal. Cycled power, then the satellite signals started populating, and it worked for the remainder of the 1 hour flight. I've just sort of gotten used to cycling the power. I've trouble shot enough intermittent failures to not expect much success until/if a total failure occurs. I think I might be going on about 4 years of this.

I remain convinced it is a software bug - or possibly flaky hardware that isn't handled by the software.

I've not had the neutron bomb failure, where it wipes out other nearby gps units, but as you mentioned, there is plenty on the web about that one.

It would be nice to see Garmin step up a bit more on this one.
 
tomhanaway said:
Brantel,
No magic answers but here's part of my experience. Had the same dropouts. Checked coax cables-nothing noticable. Made sure unit was well seated. Before sending Garmin unit in for overhaul, John Stark (Stark Avionics) helped me get a new antenna at no cost.

My first flight I had the same dropouts with the new antenna.

However, the 12 flights subsequent have been fine with no 430w problems. I noticed you mentioned first flight only. Go up and try again and see if fixed. I don't know much about electronic innards but I wonder if it just took the 430w a little time to recalibrate internally for the satellites.

Tom Hanaway
Click to expand...


Yep it was the first flight on my original 430w after Garmin said they duplicated the issue, changed the GPS board, realigned and checked everything and sent it back to me.
 
AlexPeterson said:
Yep, sounds familiar... Hence, my "good luck" comment earlier. Mine had not done it for maybe 25 hours, but did it last night. It was about 10 minutes into the flight. I turned to the satellite page and watched for about 5 or 10 minutes, with no indication of signal. Cycled power, then the satellite signals started populating, and it worked for the remainder of the 1 hour flight. I've just sort of gotten used to cycling the power. I've trouble shot enough intermittent failures to not expect much success until/if a total failure occurs. I think I might be going on about 4 years of this.

I remain convinced it is a software bug - or possibly flaky hardware that isn't handled by the software.

I've not had the neutron bomb failure, where it wipes out other nearby gps units, but as you mentioned, there is plenty on the web about that one.

It would be nice to see Garmin step up a bit more on this one.
Click to expand...

It does seem like there are a ton of reports of similar to same issues.

Sure hope it gets figured out soon.
 
I have a new anntena and still have the same drop out, the problem is I can go 5 to 10 hours with no issues and than it may happen 2 or 3 times with in an hour, I fly in IMC and its not fun not haveing the proper reliability . There's a problem and it seems Garmin feels its better to blame the thousands of builders of poor workmanship than an issue with there product. I guarantee if AFS, GRT, had this issue they would "man up" and fix this!

Just my opinion!
 
Mine barfed again today, twice. That's two flights in a row. It is certainly the nuclear power plant I fly near, yeah, that's a good explanation. This time the satellite pages repopulated relatively quickly, maybe starting within a minute or so. Crazy thing is, it might go 6 months now before doing it. Or next flight.
 
Brantel said:
Alex,

Was yours another case today where it died about 10 minutes into the flight?
Click to expand...

Yes. I looked at the 327's air time and figured the taxi time in, and I recall thinking "hmm, 10 minutes". Then maybe 15 or 20 minutes later it quit again? I need to start documenting the exact time better.

BTW, what the heck is "Dead Reckoning Mode" on these 430's? I'll have to look up. The map continues to move. Maybe if a straight path is noted for xx minutes, it will continue to move the map at that pace. Seems problematic.
 
AlexPeterson said:
BTW, what the heck is "Dead Reckoning Mode" on these 430's? I'll have to look up. The map continues to move. Maybe if a straight path is noted for xx minutes, it will continue to move the map at that pace. Seems problematic.
Click to expand...

I keep meaning to look it up as well....I see it almost every day in our 430W-equipped planes....but that is because the GPS's throw up when we go inverted for any length of time, and the daily mission is Acro. It usually keeps propogating position state pretty well though, so I'd be curious to know what it is actually doing.
 
It looks to me like it is a mode where it will use the info it is getting from the EFIS over ARINC to sort of attempt to keep some sort of a position fix by calculating where it might be based on that data and the last known fix.

I do know however that it stops sending out valid aviation data when this happens because my Gemini lost it's ground track signal each time the 430w went belly up.

25jky7r.jpg
 
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I don't believe it is getting anything from external - it just extrapolates based on last speed, and assumes one is flying along active flight plan course. Mine has no external stuff, and does the DR mode (I get to test this a lot, btw...). Thanks for showing why sometimes DR, sometimes just the "GPS lost" or whatever it is.
 
One more data point...my 430W does it too.

I've never timed it though. I have had the total GPS loss across 3 independent GPS devices as well. When I power down the 430, the other 2 GPS would begin tracking again.

Turn the 430 back on and they would drop. After some minutes, I could turn the 430 on again and everything would work.

It certainly acts like some feature of it is jamming the GPS signal, so that would equate to some signal that we should be able to measure with the right equipment and maybe figure out the source which is almost certainly 430 related.

My total setup for comparison:
430W (front panel mounted GPS antenna)
Dynon D100 and EMS120
Icom A210
Garmin audio panel
Garmin transponder
 
Thanks for discussing this issue on here gents. I'm in the process of finalizing my panel choices and last night decided I could foot the 430w bill. If I had done so and something that expensive started doing what you describe...I imagine I would be a bit upset. It seems this issue has gone on for quite some time now...I have to say I am a bit surprised that Garmin has not discovered and corrected the cause.

I believe I will put that money to better use.
 
ColoRv said:
Thanks for discussing this issue on here gents. I'm in the process of finalizing my panel choices and last night decided I could foot the 430w bill. If I had done so and something that expensive started doing what you describe...I imagine I would be a bit upset. It seems this issue has gone on for quite some time now...I have to say I am a bit surprised that Garmin has not discovered and corrected the cause.


I believe I will put that money to better use.
Click to expand...


You can't really take this thread as a confirmation that there is a major issue with all 430W's. It is my understanding that there are over 100,000 4??/5??/4??W/5??W's out in the world. That being said, anything is possible and there are many reports of basically the same issue all over the aviation forums. We all know that those that are having issues are the ones that speak up the loudest and most of the ones not having any problems remain silent most of the time.

Can't say for sure what Garmin thinks about this issue but I do know that they are making an attempt to help me with my issue.

The options are limited for an affordable panel mounted precision approach certified GPS. The GNS series GPSs have been staples in IFR panels for many years.
The newer GTN series will no doubt eventually take the place of the GNS series but that will take a while. I would still buy a 430W today if it fit my mission and budget.
If I were buying new and budget was not a concern, I would most likely pick the GTN series.
 
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My 430 W does the same thing. Seems like it used to happen while en route but several weeks ago it was closer to ten minutes after unit power on. Today I did another test on the ground and loss of lock occurred about six minutes after 430W power on. Reacquired within 30 seconds. Here is what I am providing:

Since receiving the Loss of Reception Checklist, the time from 430W power on to loss of lock is around ten minutes with the lock of lock lasting around thirty seconds.

On 20 July 2012 I ran another test. For this test I was stationary outside the hangar. Engine off. The only avionics on was the 430W and an Airmap 500 handheld GPS. Times are local MDT (UT-6). Time accuracy is approximate and some events may be later than actual since I was not expecting everything (such as 3D)

Time Event
7:24:00 Power on to 430W
7:25:29 GPS position acquisition (six satellites)
7:26:18 3D position
7:27:45 Nine satellites acquired
7:30:17 Lost lock around this time. I did not notice if all satellites lost lock simultaneously
7:30:40 Reacquired GPS lock around this time. Airmap 500 did not lose lock.

This six minute loss of lock is perhaps the earliest observed. Several weeks earlier it lost lock as I turned crosswind so it may also have been in the six minute range but I was not recording the time then. It appears that it happens once and is fine afterwards. It is possible that I could lose lock for 20-30 seconds en route and not notice it.
 
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