Brantel
Well Known Member
A couple weeks ago I started a thread related to the GA35 antenna and what looked like the second failure of the same on my airplane.
Due to my history with a prior GA35 antenna failure and the fact that mine had ran for 4 years under the cowl of my RV7, I incorrectly assumed that the heat had finally killed my second antenna.
I have to tell you that this was a wrong assumption worth just north of $300!
Turns out after installing a third new GA35 antenna, new coax cable and connectors, and even trying a forth WAAS enabled antenna of a different brand/model, it was determined that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the second antenna that I totally destroyed just to see how it was made inside....
The rest of the story is that the root cause ended up being within the GTN650 itself. The symptoms were that once the unit heated up to operating temp, the main board would lose communication with the GPS board resulting in an indication of loss of sat lock/signal. The cooler the ambient temp, the longer it would take. The warmer the ambient temp, the faster this would happen. Many times this would happen in a cyclical fashion depending on the ambient temp. Once the unit got warm enough, it would just fail completely.
Anyway, Trek Lawler and the rest of the team back at Garmin did an awesome job supporting me in my effort to find the root cause of the issues with my GPS. Once a repeatable failure mode was identified, the unit went back to Garmin and arrived there on Friday and I had it back in my hands on the following Thursday! Super fast service! The tech's confirmed a failed/failing GPS board.
The GTN has been performing flawlessly on the flights since repair.
Thank you Trek, TeamX and Garmin for amazing support even after the warranty period has expired!
Last edited: