G1000 technical info

skidoo

skidoo

Line Up and Wait
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skidoo
I seem to be having an issue with a "Nav1 needs repair" alert. Sometimes I get it and sometimes it is fine. I had thought that it may be related to being within line of sight of a VOR station. But, since my annual, it always alerts. So, I am thinking it may be a bad connection, perhaps disturbed during inspection. If that was the case, I can fix it.

I am an electrical engineer, and was an avionics tech in the military many moons ago. Back then, all electrical documentation was available and things were easy to diagnose.

So, I am wondering is, can I obtain maintenance documentation from Garmin, that is sufficient to diagnose and repair such wiring or interconnection problems? I have the Cessna electrical interconnection schematics. But, I would like some functional descriptions, i.e. what sensors or conditions trigger a particular alert, etc... Even better would be electrical diagrams and technical info for repairing the modules... What documentation does the repair techs at the avionics shop use?
 
Installation manuals are not hard to find. A google on e.g.

g1000 installation manual

should find what you need, eventually :)

Maintenance manuals (the ones with schematics) are virtually nonexistent for Garmin stuff, however. You can find them for Honeywell stuff and I have a big collection of all this stuff.
 
skidoo said:
Even better would be electrical diagrams and technical info for repairing the modules... What documentation does the repair techs at the avionics shop use?
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Probably none. The G1000 system is marketed as being made of Line Replaceable Units. I would hazard to guess that the techs just pull them and ship them back to Garmin, who probably just destroys them, unless they need to determine the failure cause. This is all my guess, though.
 
gprellwitz said:
Probably none. The G1000 system is marketed as being made of Line Replaceable Units. I would hazard to guess that the techs just pull them and ship them back to Garmin, who probably just destroys them, unless they need to determine the failure cause. This is all my guess, though.
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I would imagine most of the LRUs get repaired and shipped back out to customers. Seems like a real waste otherwise. I haven't had the same alert but did get "XPNDR needs repair" last week. I told maintenance and they swapped out the LRUs.
 
HPNPilot1200 said:
I would imagine most of the LRUs get repaired and shipped back out to customers. Seems like a real waste otherwise. I haven't had the same alert but did get "XPNDR needs repair" last week. I told maintenance and they swapped out the LRUs.
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Yup. And when something breaks there's a flat fee to send it in and get back a working one. It's pretty reasonable in terms of aviation stuff, IIRC even a PFD/MFD runs just slightly north of 2 AMU.
 
We had a CAP bird that was throwing odd errors. They were going to pull the LRU but instead found a connector issue and worked through that. Bird's been fine since then.
 
I recall reading somewhere that the G1000 is difficult to work on unless you are a Garmin dealer because some of the stuff involves loading software and config codes which are not available to others.

I don't know to what extent this is true.

It reportedly also applies to the G500/600.
 
Regarding intermittent or oxidized connections, which are sometimes fixed by unplugging and replugging a device: Would loosening the thumb screw, pulling and re-seating the LRU, and re-tightening the thumb screw, be a violation of maintenance regs if you're not an A&P or avionics guy?
 
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