Lots of static; sometimes.

J

Jenna

Filing Flight Plan
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Jan 6, 2013
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Out west somewhere
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Display name:
Jenna
I recently took a long cross country and noticed I was getting a lot of intermittent static on my Garmin 530w. It seems to get a lot worse when I am close to large airports. When it occurs, the static is constant and horrible. But hen Approach calls me, the static subsides a little bit so I can hear them, but it still has static and makes it very difficult to understand them. When I am out in the wide open spaces it is much better.

Pushing the Volume Control (Auto Squelch override) doesn't seem to change anything. Could this be an antenna connection problem, or do I need to send the unit back to Garmin?
 
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I'd have a decent shop take a look at it first. Garmin won't take the radio from you directly anyhow. Definitely some sort of interference, but it's not clear that it could be an antenna issue.
 
Sometimes this kind of interference comes from portable electronics plugged into the cigarette lighter.
 
JOhnH said:
I should have mentioned that I unplugged the USB adapter with no effect. I do have a 496 that I think is hard wired. Could that cause it?
Click to expand...

kgruber said:
Probably not. But in the interest of troubleshooting, try turning it off.
Click to expand...

Don't just turn it off, locate the power supply and cut it off by either unplugging a cable or pulling a circuit breaker. I have had radio noise issues and one source was a power / data cable to the 496.

For the OP, I would recommend pulling breakers when the static occurs. You might find that one breaker removes the offending static - other than the breaker for the 530w of course...
I had intermittent static on a 430w for a long time that came from a few sources. The power wire for my 496 was one source. I had a cigarette lighter style charger for a tablet that was noisy. Most recently, I pulled the breaker for my EFIS and determined that to be responsible for static on the 430w.
 
I had an ELT go bad and bleed enough RF to break squelch when near powerful transmitters. Took a long time to find since none of the clues made sense with a powered off ELT.
 
kgruber said:
Sometimes this kind of interference comes from portable electronics plugged into the cigarette lighter.
Click to expand...

I have a portable battery that sometimes throws off just enough RF, when charging the iPad with screen on, to break the squelch. I found that moving the battery to various positions or using a better shielded or longer cord than the white Apple one or just disconnecting the battery eliminates the RF interference.

Something to rule out for OP.
 
If fiberglass plane, it could be static build up.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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