Comedy of Errors

[wilkersk]

My friend asked me to look at his certified aircraft with a G500/GTN750 and FlightStream 510 installed. It worked when he bought the airplane. But, since he got it back from a pitot/static/transponder check he's been unable to update his databases on the GDU or the GTN. He'd asked the tech to update his databases to the then current cycle, and the guy muffed it up somehow. I have no experience with the G500 or FlightStream 510. But I said I'd give it a try.

First discovery, the Fly Garmin online account no longer shows his aircraft.
2nd, The SD card reader that ships with FlightStream 510 cannot be found and the card is not recognized by the native laptop SD slot on my friend's PC (a common problem).
3rd, My friend is not familiar with the wireless Database Concierge and does not have the subscription to Garmin Pilot that would allow him to use it.
4th, the 8GB Garmin branded "Data Supp" card is corrupted.
5th, the UTC offset is set differently on each LRU (GDU and the GTN).

Just to compound the problem: 6th, I inputed the unit ID number for the GTN incorrectly. Somehow I fat fingered it and dropped 1 digit when recreating his FlyGarmin account.

After a couple of hours yesterday evening and a few more this morning, along with several calls to Garmin Aviation Tech Support line, I finally got it sorted out!

Between this and the GFC500 autopilot saga on another aircraft last year, I refuse to trust any avionics shop that claims to be a certified Garmin dealer

 

[wilkersk]

PS: Garmin's aviation tech support hotline rocks! They always picked up right away and never put me on hold. They know their stuff and resolved the issue very quickly. And, at no time did they sound condescending like i've heard elsewhere.

 

[Hang 4]

If the following is true, how was your friend updating things before the work?

3rd, My friend is not familiar with the wireless Database Concierge and does not have the subscription to Garmin Pilot that would allow him to use it.

 

[wilkersk]

If the following is true, how was your friend updating things before the work?

It was up to date when he bought the aircraft. After that, he hadn't updated for several cycles before taking it to the avionics shop. He'd been flying it day VFR for fun flights and using Foreflight on his iphone as needed. When he got serious about getting his IFR ticket, it became necessary to get the aircraft in compliance. That's when the trouble started.

I was trying to manual update the SD card for the GDU and then synching the GTN over Flightstream. Its doable once everything is correctly configured, except for Terrain data (which should've already been on the flightstream sd card, but is not for some reason (error #7).

 

[MooneyDriver78]

I had no problems like this with my experiences with Garmin dealers, but all aren’t created equal.

 

[Hang 4]

Did your friend ask the dealer to update all the devices to the current firmware? That is a dealer only function and one I'd ask a dealer to do while it's in for a IFR cert. Did the dealer charge the time for the database update?
When you said "it worked" before the update, did you mean it functioned as GPS and display, or you could update the databases? It sounds like he (your friend) never updated the databases himself since buying the plane. No Garmin Pilot subscription. Had he purchased a DB subscription? I remember when I bought mine, with the same avionics, the dealer "updated the databases". I was new to ownership and later realized all they gave me was one month of data. I had to go through a similar rigamarole because I did not understand the terminology.
Long way of saying, not sure the dealer is totally "at fault" on this one. Not zero either, but not 100%.