Garmin software - Ugh!!!!!

Lance F

Lance F

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Lance F
My airport 9A1 has been waiting ~forever for an LPV approach. We got it on Thursday. However, those of us who tried it got no glideslope, and the 430/530 screen only showed LNAV. What's up with that? we wondered.

Well last night I discovered deep in the bowels of garmin.com Service Alert 0825 which advised that on ALL their in-panel, certified WAAS units airports with only 3 letter/number designators could not get vertical guidance on any approaches with an LPV. To quote Garmin in this July 22, 2008 report "Garmin has identified an issue, whereby all LPV approaches at airports with three-character identifiers will function as an LNAV-only approach."

Garmin's so called Resolution states "The ability to fly LPV and LNAV/VNAV approaches to airports with three character identifiers will be added in later software versions."

Does that stink or what? The FAA (your tax dollars) spent plenty to get this LPV approach certified and now 99% of the WAAS equipped aircraft likely to use my airport can't use the approach as intended. I sure hope that Garmin's monopoly in this market ends soon.

Rant off.
 
Don't get me started.

The latest version of Jepp (gip) update manager (v2.10) doesn't support previous data card programmers and requires a new usb card interface. There's no warning until you try to run the new version to update an existing data card. ($50 core charge to swap out for a new one).

Calling Jepp or Garmin tech support ranks right up there with a hot branding iron enema.
 
Lance F said:
Does that stink or what? The FAA (your tax dollars) spent plenty to get this LPV approach certified and now 99% of the WAAS equipped aircraft likely to use my airport can't use the approach as intended. I sure hope that Garmin's monopoly in this market ends soon.

Rant off.
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Don't feel bad, I fly a 6-month old airplane that cannot do an LPV approach. WAAS, waas that?
 
Lance F said:
Well last night I discovered deep in the bowels of garmin.com Service Alert 0825 which advised that on ALL their in-panel, certified WAAS units airports with only 3 letter/number designators could not get vertical guidance on any approaches with an LPV. To quote Garmin in this July 22, 2008 report "Garmin has identified an issue, whereby all LPV approaches at airports with three-character identifiers will function as an LNAV-only approach."

Garmin's so called Resolution states "The ability to fly LPV and LNAV/VNAV approaches to airports with three character identifiers will be added in later software versions."
Click to expand...

Does this, then, explain why I got no glide slope at Fredericksburg, TX (T82)?

---

Edit:

The Service Alert states that
"Be aware that all LPV approaches at airports with three-character identifiers function as an LNAV-only approach." and "Additionally, all runways with LNAV/VNAV and LPV approaches (at airports with threecharacter identifiers) are also affected. In this case, both LNAV/VNAV and LPV approaches will function as an LNAV-only approach."

But it includes a chart of "Affected Airports," and there are only twelve listed.

So what is it?
 
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Yep. There ought to be very prominent NOTAMs about this. Maybe that would embarass Garmin into fixing this sooner rather than later.
 
There's been a lot of discussion about this on the Beechlist over the last week.

A NOTAM doesn't seem like the right solution to me, but somehow Garmin needs to improve its SB/SA delivery. It could be as easy as an email subscription service...

-Felix
 
i dont recall if ive ever had the 421 (with the Apollo/UPS/Garmin 480) into a 3 letter airport.
 
oh ok, Lances original post said that the service letter affected ALL Garmin WAAS boxes.
 
But it includes a chart of "Affected Airports," and there are only twelve listed.

So what is it?
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My assumption would be that as of the date the bulletin was issued, back in July, there were only 12 three-lettered airports with LPV approaches, and these were listed in the bulletin. Was the LPV approach at T82 commissioned since July?
-harry
 
Simple - petition for a new four letter id! This is probably a simple code fix, but the configuration management path for new code taking from development through multiple iterations of testing and finally into production (remember this code has to be reviewed/approved by the FAA) will probably take a while.
 
According to the Service Alert the GNS480 is not affected. Sorry if I misspoke.

Tim, this Alert was published on 22 July 2008. How long is "awhile." How did this get through the initial certification? How long does it take for an airport to change its identifier?
 
Why wouldn't this "fix" have been done before they started publishing the software upgrades for WAAS upgrades to start with?

I doubt we'll get the upgraded G-1000 WAAS any time soon. The boss isn't thrilled about spending the bucks.
 
sba55 said:
According to Garmin, this will be fixed with a software update in December....
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That would be reasonably good news. Can you cite a reference? I'm going to try to get our local Garmin service center to call Garmin about this tomorrow, but it would be nice to see something in writing.
 
Lance F said:
That would be reasonably good news. Can you cite a reference? I'm going to try to get our local Garmin service center to call Garmin about this tomorrow, but it would be nice to see something in writing.
Click to expand...
Lance, I read it in a post from a guy who usually knows what he's talking about, but I don't have a written reference. He mentioned that he had called Garmin Tech Support, so they might know there.
 
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