I figured out when Garmin Pilot crashes...

Sinistar

Sinistar

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Brad
....under the lowest shelf of the Bravo, just after departing and about 1/2 mile from oncoming traffic. Yeah, that was fun...NOT!

Things started out fine. My wife and I launched out of our home base (west of the Twin Cities) and got a straight over the top Bravo clearance to the downtown St.Paul airport. Nice view of KMSP and big planes landing and below us. She flew and I comm'd. Nice landing and dinner on the outside patio at Holman's Table right on the field. Several 3M jets landed, the Guard copters were out and the nearby B25 did a full stop and take off.

On the way I way out I asked for FF back to our home base. The takeoff clearance was a left downwind which would pretty much put us right back on our same path to get there. I was expecting the handoff to MPLS. But downtown St.Paul vectors me a bit me north and doesn't hand me off yet. So I am not cleared into the Bravo and the Shorewood towers and KMIC and KANE airspaces are coming up fast.

Then IT happens...something about "Garmin Pilot has stopped". No more map, no reassuring little plane icon flying along over maps only us amazing pilots could possible understand. Almost immediately I am offered 2 options. First choice "Restart the app". The second choice "Send in the error report."

Things now go into slow motion for like 0.823sec which seems like 17 minutes. I actually contemplate sending in the error report because this is worst friggin' possible time for it to crash. However its not a 4G tablet and it only takes me another 0.00234seconds to realize that attempting to send in a error report with no internet will surely turn into a new adventure that will result in a pilot deviation (and I already have 1) so I wusspile out and select "Restart the app",

Now this is where time freezes but velocity and position do not! At least am under the lowest Bravo shelf and headed away from it. So as long as don't turn or climb it should be okay. The app is now restarting
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
ATC: "Skylane 12Q left heading 290, climb and maintain 3500". Great...****! Pretty sure I am out of the 2300 shelf but not 100% sure, just my normal 47% sure
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................still restarting.

Then an ATC miracle: "Skylane 12Q cleared into the MPLS Class Bravo, resume on course to your destination maintain 3500".

Of course like 1 second later GP is up and running again.

The funny part is that it logged the entire flight and recorded the entire flight track. This crash was on a Android and I was not running my iPad backup (what lesson was learned there!). I had been using the Android because my iPad mini 4 would lock up when going from certain screens back to the moving map. And the android display is much nicer.

I predict many follow up posts on how their [whatever table] running [whatever software] has never crashed.

But I still wonder if I should have went for the "Send error report" option :)
 
No GPS moving map in the panel?

And people (not necessarily you) wonder why we can't just use portables for IFR primary.
 
asicer said:
Yup. Around bravo I prefer eyeballs on landmarks.
Click to expand...

I learned that one the hard way almost. Old crusty CFI told me to get my head out of my ... app... and notice there was a reservoir right at the wedding cake boundary.

If you can’t see THAT... :)
 
I ditched Garmin because it wasn't trustworthy. I had it on an Android device.
Avare on my phone has never failed.
 
Shepherd said:
I ditched Garmin because it wasn't trustworthy. I had it on an Android device.
Avare on my phone has never failed.
Click to expand...

It’s a lot more stable on iOS than Android.

Android is just a disaster for tablet use for whatever reasons. It really shouldn’t be, since it’s just Linux, but it’s a mess.
 
denverpilot said:
Android is just a disaster for tablet use for whatever reasons. It really shouldn’t be, since it’s just Linux, but it’s a mess.
Click to expand...

Well, it is and it isn't. Apps, for the most part, run in a JVM (Dalvik) or think they are running in a JVM (ART).
 
Cool story bro. I keep a backup iPad and iPhone handy. iPhone I could have going in probably 10 seconds. The spare iPad probably 60-90 seconds since it is in my bag. My little airplane has turned tideways a few times and even turned into a dot before.
 
I keep GP on both my tablet and my phone (and the only reason I have a phone as large as I do is so that I can read the charts on it) but to be honest I don't usually have GP up and running on both together. Good reminder, I should probably do that. My ADSB receiver will only talk to one at a time (I assume - bluetooth) but still much better than nothing.
 
I never have had GP crash when flying. When downloading files at home on the wifi, sure. But that was my own fault for starting other apps (Netflix).

I also use GP in a more limited fashion, to get weather, look up routes, charts and other stuff. Never critical time wise flight stuff.

Tim

Sent from my SM-J737T using Tapatalk
 
Sinistar said:
....under the lowest shelf of the Bravo, just after departing and about 1/2 mile from oncoming traffic. Yeah, that was fun...NOT!

Things started out fine. My wife and I launched out of our home base (west of the Twin Cities) and got a straight over the top Bravo clearance to the downtown St.Paul airport. Nice view of KMSP and big planes landing and below us. She flew and I comm'd. Nice landing and dinner on the outside patio at Holman's Table right on the field. Several 3M jets landed, the Guard copters were out and the nearby B25 did a full stop and take off.

On the way I way out I asked for FF back to our home base. The takeoff clearance was a left downwind which would pretty much put us right back on our same path to get there. I was expecting the handoff to MPLS. But downtown St.Paul vectors me a bit me north and doesn't hand me off yet. So I am not cleared into the Bravo and the Shorewood towers and KMIC and KANE airspaces are coming up fast.

Then IT happens...something about "Garmin Pilot has stopped". No more map, no reassuring little plane icon flying along over maps only us amazing pilots could possible understand. Almost immediately I am offered 2 options. First choice "Restart the app". The second choice "Send in the error report."

Things now go into slow motion for like 0.823sec which seems like 17 minutes. I actually contemplate sending in the error report because this is worst friggin' possible time for it to crash. However its not a 4G tablet and it only takes me another 0.00234seconds to realize that attempting to send in a error report with no internet will surely turn into a new adventure that will result in a pilot deviation (and I already have 1) so I wusspile out and select "Restart the app",

Now this is where time freezes but velocity and position do not! At least am under the lowest Bravo shelf and headed away from it. So as long as don't turn or climb it should be okay. The app is now restarting
.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
ATC: "Skylane 12Q left heading 290, climb and maintain 3500". Great...****! Pretty sure I am out of the 2300 shelf but not 100% sure, just my normal 47% sure
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................still restarting.

Then an ATC miracle: "Skylane 12Q cleared into the MPLS Class Bravo, resume on course to your destination maintain 3500".

Of course like 1 second later GP is up and running again.

The funny part is that it logged the entire flight and recorded the entire flight track. This crash was on a Android and I was not running my iPad backup (what lesson was learned there!). I had been using the Android because my iPad mini 4 would lock up when going from certain screens back to the moving map. And the android display is much nicer.

I predict many follow up posts on how their [whatever table] running [whatever software] has never crashed.

But I still wonder if I should have went for the "Send error report" option :)
Click to expand...

So you fly with GP on Android which even Garmin says is no good and an IPAD that locks up switching between screens. What could possible go wrong.
 
I run GP on the original iPad mini. Never locks up but doesn’t have the horsepower to swap between apps quickly. Therefore, I only run the GP app by itself and leave it open the whole time.
 
Okay now that we’re past the funny part a few clarifications

We did have the iPad mini 4 with latest updates and charts in the plane, just not sitting out and powered on. If the app restart would have failed we would have went there next. We also have the Twin Cities sectional and TAC in the plane so paper would have been okay.

I can pretty easily fly visually under all shelves of the MSP Bravo around the west and south and somewhat east sides because I trained there. The tablet crashed up in the north part where I am least familiar.

We tried a lot of apps and both of us just like GP the best. We are also GTX345 users now which narrows it down to FF and GP. My wife will usually fly the sectional view and likes the menus. I usually fly the Garmin screens with various things hidden at certain distances.

We both figured the crash was due to it trying to download chart updates. Right before it crashed we noticed the little download arrow. I left the tablet on while at the airport having dinner and I’m wondering if it hopped on their open WiFi and started figuring out downloads. Even if not the issue they should probably abort downloads when flight is detected.

Android vs iPad. I covered it in another thread but goes like this:

The Android screen wins hands down. It is sharper and bright enough in sunlight to leave it panel mounted.

If the GPS satellite signal goes down it won’t matter what device you have. If the portable gps device goes down our Android gas built in gps and works in our panel mount. Our iPad mini doesn’t have Gps because I didn’t want to f around with a cellular version.

A release or two after SynViz the iOS version of GP would lock up when navigating from SynViz back to the map. Also, the iPad mini “top” app would freeze when I was doing screen recording and I would try to stop it. The Android in the other hand has several nice screen recorders with nice access options and never caused an issue. So the Apple world isn’t all Unicorns and Tesla’s like the masses are lead to believe.

So given all that we’ve been very happy GP Android users.

Where the iPad mini 4 easily wins is battery life, nearly an extra hour (4.5 vs 3.5) running continuously with a bright screen. It also wins on rendering, especially SynViz and very complicated maps (eg. obstacles and large cities). And it had better be faster since it’s native objective C vs runtime byte code Java. In a way you kinda need to give them credit for supporting both platforms and accomplishing what they can without access to low level instructions like their iOS counterparts.

I guess I should go back and see if the iOS GP screen crash is cured now, but I’ll never like the iPad mini 4 display over the Android in bright light.

So it’s not quite so simple. Once we have our Garmin 335a we will have a more reliable 2nd moving map. But that’s next year.

Let the my tablet/app can beat can beat up your tablet/app wars begin :)
 
My iPad overheated and shut down one time in the cockpit. Unfortunately, it was on the ground at KBJC where I needed the taxi diagram and my backup paper charts were limited to the NC chart supplement and NC-1 terminal procedures. I managed to get it to cool down and get going. But it did pick the most inconvenient time to pull that trick.
 
iamtheari said:
My iPad overheated and shut down one time in the cockpit. Unfortunately, it was on the ground at KBJC where I needed the taxi diagram and my backup paper charts were limited to the NC chart supplement and NC-1 terminal procedures. I managed to get it to cool down and get going. But it did pick the most inconvenient time to pull that trick.
Click to expand...

Ok I gotta ask how you got lost on BJC. Haha.

Kidding. Just kidding. :)
 
Sinistar said:
Then IT happens...something about "Garmin Pilot has stopped". No more map, no reassuring little plane icon flying along over maps only us amazing pilots could possible understand. Almost immediately I am offered 2 options. First choice "Restart the app". The second choice "Send in the error report."

Things now go into slow motion for like 0.823sec which seems like 17 minutes. I actually contemplate sending in the error report because this is worst friggin' possible time for it to crash. However its not a 4G tablet and it only takes me another 0.00234seconds to realize that attempting to send in a error report with no internet will surely turn into a new adventure that will result in a pilot deviation (and I already have 1) so I wusspile out and select "Restart the app",
Click to expand...
The write-up sounds incredibly dramatic.

Problem 1: Being far too reliant on your gadgets.

You’ve just revealed to us all that you experience great distress and anxiety when your electronic devices decide to go inop and rely far too heavily on them to guide you from A to B. Great job!

I wonder how the guys who flew in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s etc., ever did it without electronic assistance. :eek:

This is a good lesson for all of us.
 
EdFred said:
No GPS moving map in the panel?

And people (not necessarily you) wonder why we can't just use portables for IFR primary.
Click to expand...
My bad - I commented that we will probably have a 335a sometime next year.

Right now dual KX155's one with ILS/GS and one normal VOR. We yanked the ADF/NDB/Loran and our DME croaked so its just the 2 VOR's and tablegadgethingy which is panel mounted right under the glare shield so its always shaded and easy to see. Its always on ships power and ironically the Android doesn't overheat but I have had the ipad overheat in the same location while charging (yet another Android vs Ipad difference). Until we recently got the GTX345 we had a GDL39-3D up on the dash and it is also ships powered. I left the power cable there and we throw the GDL39 in our flight bag as a backup (it has a battery pack) in case we lost all electrical in which case we could fly with a tablet and portable ADSB in for GPS......until the tablet software crashes - LOL!

In seriousness, if we hadn't been given the Bravo Clearance and I was really getting worried I just would have asked Approach for help. We have the nearest VOR (Gopher) on a quick reference sheet and could dial it in in about 5 seconds and then overflown it (which is away from the bravo and then gets you sure of you lateral position and therefore which Bravo shelf you are under.

I am really looking forward to the 355a. Our second KX155's display is pretty bad on the NAV side. And having a certified moving map with airspaces will be awesome. Kinda small screen but would definitely work in the case we had the other day.
 
Ryanb said:
The write-up sounds incredibly dramatic.

Problem 1: Being far too reliant on your gadgets.

You’ve just revealed to us all that you experience great distress and anxiety when your electronic devices decide to go inop and rely far too heavily on them to guide you from A to B. Great job!

I wonder how the guys who flew in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s etc., ever did it without electronic assistance. :eek:

This is a good lesson for all of us.
Click to expand...


I bet his wife didn’t panic.
 
Sinistar said:
In seriousness, if we hadn't been given the Bravo Clearance and I was really getting worried I just would have asked Approach for help. We have the nearest VOR (Gopher) on a quick reference sheet and could dial it in in about 5 seconds and then overflown it (which is away from the bravo and then gets you sure of you lateral position and therefore which Bravo shelf you are under.
Click to expand...
I would add to that reducing throttle and slowing down. Maybe even tell approach you are going to orbit over present position.
 
Ryanb said:
The write-up sounds incredibly dramatic.
Click to expand...
Perhaps mega stupidly overly dramatic :)

I knew people would take this too seriously or think I was about to die or crash into the president or something :) Alas, I had VOR's and sectionals and 3000hr pilot wife in the next seat ready to help if needed. Our GTX345 was calling out nearby traffic and so was ATC. I have yet to have a controller down here (App/Dep/CTR or the local Delta towers) not speak up if someone is getting close to busting the Bravo. Those guys are great. Just heard one the other day while on FF near KMSP (ATC warns another pilot they're getting close to the Bravo...and a big thanks from the pilot). Plus I have the best help just one key click away. I could have told them what happened, asked for position check or vectors. It was not an emergency, just a great example that a tablet can fail in very interesting places (Bravo airspace).
 
asicer said:
I would add to that reducing throttle and slowing down. Maybe even tell approach you are going to orbit over present position.
Click to expand...
Hmmm...now that this thread has went sideways lets have fun with this one...

The last damn thing I am gonna do is slow down and do circles at 1000agl over a big city with zero landing options. I'm keeping my speed up and heading outwards so I can climb and get up under the next higher shelf and get the next 700ft of altitude. And rather than orbit I would have just asked for vectors to get clear and avoid a pilot deviation.

I guess others might actually read this thread so if my solution (previous paragraph) above is wrong please fix it or suggest something different.
 
Sinistar said:
Perhaps mega stupidly overly dramatic :)

I knew people would take this too seriously or think I was about to die or crash into the president or something :) Alas, I had VOR's and sectionals and 3000hr pilot wife in the next seat ready to help if needed. Our GTX345 was calling out nearby traffic and so was ATC. I have yet to have a controller down here (App/Dep/CTR or the local Delta towers) not speak up if someone is getting close to busting the Bravo. Those guys are great. Just heard one the other day while on FF near KMSP (ATC warns another pilot they're getting close to the Bravo...and a big thanks from the pilot). Plus I have the best help just one key click away. I could have told them what happened, asked for position check or vectors. It was not an emergency, just a great example that a tablet can fail in very interesting places (Bravo airspace).
Click to expand...
Look, admittedly, my first post was a bit harsh, but my point is that it appears complacency has created what should’ve been a non-event, into something that created much surprise and panic.

Remember, EFBs and all devices are just supplements - THATS IT. Relying on them entirely is a big no no. Now, had this occurred during an approach in LIFR conditions, I could see the fright being justified, but in VFR conditions, not so much. You have a multitude of other resources to help navigate besides a tablet.

It’s a lesson learned.
 
Since you told me in your profane, now removed prior post, that I’m on ignore, I don’t feel as guilty about posting this.

I’ve watched your posts here for sometime, and with nearly everyone of them you position yourself as a very behind the curve pilot, small things causing you great surprise and distress. You find it quite a handful to fly a rather ordinary 182, while your 3000 hour wife, commercial pilot sits beside you.

I don’t know if you over-emphasize the dramatic for creative/storytelling purposes, or if you really are that intimidated by that which you try to do. For the sake of your family, I hope you simply are enjoying being overly dramatic
 
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