Louise Hose

Louise Hose

Well Known Member
Can anyone explain to me (or point me to the information) on why a Garmin 396 will suddenly turn itself off, almost immediately turn itself on without any action on my part, and retain it's flight plan? I seem to have this happen about once every 5 hours, although I haven't log the phenomenon in a manner to say that it's actually periodic. Paul says he's had it happen only once. I've also heard of others experiencing the problem.

It isn't a big problem since it comes right back up and retains its route information, but it does have a knack of happening when I'm watching it to cut a corner near the ADIZ and such. :eek: Sometimes I feel like Garmin programmed it as a reminder that I shouldn't only rely on a GPS for navigation!
 
Louise,

Have you tried calling the Garmin support line? (1-800-800-1020) They are very helpful and a few are actually pilots.

It is possible that you need a software update or that the 396 simply needs to be reset but Garmin will be able to tell you.
 
Re-set

Louise:

Is your 396 hard wired to ships power?????? (I suspect it is if Paul helped you install it.) If not, maybe the power point (cigarette lighter) has some corrosion and momentarily loses contact on occasion. Other than that, it's a computer isn't it?:rolleyes:
 
mannanj said:
Louise:

Is your 396 hard wired to ships power??????...
Click to expand...
I wouldn't expect that to be the problem. The 396 and 496 should switch to internal power if external power is removed. Other than the GPS advising you that external power has been lost, and you need to press a button, that occurs seamlessly, in my experience.
 
Since Louise is on the east Coast and probably isn't up anymore....yes, her 396 is wired to Ship's power, the reboots "just happen". The unit went back to Garmin once because it just wouldn't keep a battery charged (even a new one - we tried different batteries), and when it came back, it still has had power issues on and off. When it reboots, it just goes blank without a warning, as if it lost all power, then came back on. Of course, I have checked all contacts between the unit and the battery, and on up the line.

My own 396 has done this spontaneous reboot once - I was tracking along a big line of weather, using the "animate" feature to predict where things were going, and it decided to take a momentary break.That ticked me off, as I lost all of the weather history and of course, had to wait for a couple minutes before the first radar update. At the time, I suspected that the machine got memory saturated or something - never had it happen again.

(Neat link Wes!)

Paul
 
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Garmin 396 Off/On Problems

Hi Louise,
I doubt that it's an antenna problem, but my 396 used to "freeze" the screen at a certain location. Paul told me he had that to happen with his near a certain antenna farm near Houston. I contaced Garmin and they sent me a different antenna (at no charge) and mine has been rock solid since. I've never had your problem, but just thought there might be a remote chance that it's antenna related.
Hope you get it fixed.
Don
 
Thanks Paul, but I have to give credit to Luca. He posted it on VAF a while back and I just came accross it.
Thanks Luca


Posted on VAF by Luca--------

Googling around I found a very interesting page with some hidden commands for the Garmin 2xx/3xx4xx series units:

http://home.online.no/~sigurdhu/GPSm...C_commands.htm

Beware, you're on your own if you use these commands! YMMV.

Ciao, Luca
 
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