Disabling select audio alarms on 496

[Jamie]

Anyone know how to disable the sink rate audible warning on the Garmin 496? It's annoying as @#$#$@ when doing acro. I don't want to disable all of the other terrain warnings, just this one. Is it possible? Is there a way to adjust the sink rate that the alarm will sound at?

I've poked around the menu and checked the manual but can't find anything other than disabling all terrain/voice prompts.

Thanks in advance.

[mburch]

Originally Posted by Jamie

Anyone know how to disable the sink rate audible warning on the Garmin 496? It's annoying as @#$#$@ when doing acro. I don't want to disable all of the other terrain warnings, just this one. Is it possible? Is there a way to adjust the sink rate that the alarm will sound at?

There sure is... go to the terrain page, press Menu, select Set Up Terrain, and change Descent Rate Sensitivity from High to Low. If you still get unwanted sink rate alerts, you can change it all the way to Off.

happy flying,
mcb

[Jamie]

Ahh...perfect...will give it a try tonight! Thanks!

[Jamie]

I went flying yesterday evening to test a few things. It worked perfectly Matt! No more Betsy harping at me unnecessarily.

I guess it never occurred to me that the "Sink Rate...Pull Up" audible alarm was related to terrain. I swear I looked at every other menu looking for this.

Thanks again.

[mburch]

Originally Posted by Jamie

I guess it never occurred to me that the "Sink Rate...Pull Up" audible alarm was related to terrain.

Yep - The descent rate alert in the 496 works in a very similar way to the EDR alert in a certified TAWS system. If you check out page 40 of this document, you'll see that the closer to the ground you are, the closer she's watching you for excessive descent rate. So really she's telling you not to do aerobatics so low next time.

(The shape of that graph is defined in TSO-C151b, by the way)

cheers,
mcb

[breister]

There is another way to handle this as well.

Turn off the Garmin while you are doing Acro.

I am not joking. If you disable or desensitize this alarm, it won't be there if you are ever in marginal / bad weather and actually could benefit from it.

Just a thought...

Bill