Flightstream 210 Issue

[SoCal 182 Driver]

Friends -

I had an unusual situation yesterday. In the middle of an IFR training flight using Foreflight and a Garmin GNS530W, I hear in my headset words to the effect of, "Flightstream 210 has disconnected." Then, a minute or two later, I get a pop-up message in Foreflight that a new flight plan had been downloaded from the 530W.

The issue didn't cause any problems, as I was using the 530W for GPS steering and nothing changed there, and had the approach plate on my iPad so nothing changed there.

I'm curious, though, about what happened? Can anyone shed some light on this issue?

Thanks!

 

[schmookeeg]

Weird, I have never had an audio alert/annunciation of any kind from my 210.

 

[SoCal 182 Driver]

Weird, I have never had an audio alert/annunciation of any kind from my 210.

I'm pretty sure it was an alert from Foreflight letting me know that the 210 had disconnected...but it was a first for me, too.

 

[Groundpounder]

Friends -

I had an unusual situation yesterday. In the middle of an IFR training flight using Foreflight and a Garmin GNS530W, I hear in my headset words to the effect of, "Flightstream 210 has disconnected." Then, a minute or two later, I get a pop-up message in Foreflight that a new flight plan had been downloaded from the 530W.

The issue didn't cause any problems, as I was using the 530W for GPS steering and nothing changed there, and had the approach plate on my iPad so nothing changed there.

I'm curious, though, about what happened? Can anyone shed some light on this issue?

Thanks!

I have had that issue as well, and can't find any solution. Did you have more than one device connected to the FS210? I have two regularly, just wondering if that may somehow be an issue?

 

[schmookeeg]

I'm pretty sure it was an alert from Foreflight letting me know that the 210 had disconnected...but it was a first for me, too.

Aha -- as a garmin pilot user, this cures me of a small bit of FOMO. I was about to go bark at my avionics dude for not mentioning the aural alerting options

 

[SoCal 182 Driver]

I have had that issue as well, and can't find any solution. Did you have more than one device connected to the FS210? I have two regularly, just wondering if that may somehow be an issue?

AFAIK, just the one device.

 

[Groundpounder]

AFAIK, just the one device.

Hmm...ok, rules that idea out.

 

[NordicDave]

I've had this happen to me a couple of times. Helpful when Bluetooth is deactivated on all other devices unused in the cockpit. When this happened to me, did not realize 4 BT devices transmitting. Seems like everything has a BT radio in it these days.

 

[SoCal 182 Driver]

I've had this happen to me a couple of times. Helpful when Bluetooth is deactivated on all other devices unused in the cockpit. When this happened to me, did not realize 4 BT devices transmitting. Seems like everything has a BT radio in it these days.

Interesting.

I just got this reply back from FF: It is difficult to say what may have caused the temporary disconnect. As a best practice, please run your ForeFlight iPad/iPhone in Airplane mode and only turn on the Bluetooth function to make the Garmin connection. This will minimize interference and the change of disconnects.

 

[SoCal 182 Driver]

I received this email from Foreflight after I sent them my diagnostic logs following the disconnect. The interesting part is the reference (highlighted) that they've seen a few instances of similar behavior recently. I wonder if there's a glitch in the latest version of FF.

The diagnostics suggest that ForeFlight was unable to see your Flight Stream's Bluetooth signal when you experienced the disconnect. While we don't yet know why that could be, please know we are working to understand this behavior better. In the meantime, toggling Bluetooth can sometimes quickly restore the connection. We've reached out to Garmin for additional troubleshooting assistance as we've seen a few other similar reports lately.

Additionally, I see you also fly with a Stratus. If the Flight Stream disconnects become more prevalent, we'd be curious to know if disconnecting from Stratus has any effect.

Lastly, Flight Stream can only connect to two devices simultaneously. We suggest disabling Bluetooth on all devices that you don't want to connect to your Flight Stream while flying so that they don't unintentionally take up one of the connections. In the meantime, we'd appreciate additional PIREPs if you continue to see this issue with a fresh set of diagnostics.