jimmyjack
Ejection Handle Pulled
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2015
- Messages
- 252
- Display Name
Display name:
Nick
I posted about a week ago about my STEC 30 that stops tracking the magenta line (and/or HDG bug) on my Garmin G5.
Power cycling the STEC individually and the avionics master separately fixed nothing. Avionics shop couldn't pinpoint it over the phone.
Hangaring, shutting everything down, rebooting avionics master brought it back up, working in HDG mode, GPSS untestable because I was inside the hangar.
Few days later I was flying along and lost GPS signal on my 430W. At the same time, I completely lost my AP in both GPSS and HDG. GPS signal returned about two minutes later and the AP started working again.
A'ha, I thought, and called my shop again. He said yes that definitely makes sense.
The G5 relies on the GPS signal for GPSS and HDG so if you lose that you lose your AP in anything but wing leveler mode.
I questioned him on why, then, do I have working AP through HDG while inside the hangar.
The answer was that when you first boot the G5 and that it sees it doesn't have a GPS signal, it emulates (?) heading through the magnetometer...? I'm paraphrasing here, but that's the gist of it.
Then, once it has a GPS signal, it doesn't like it when it loses it and won't "revert" to emulation so you do indeed lose HDG mode on the AP.
So then. The only thing left to test is to lose GPS signal in flight again AND THEN turn off the G5 completely and turn it back on. This is the only thing I didn't do the last time (power cycling the G5 fully). Doing this, I should at least get heading mode, during intermittent GPS loss.
If you've been following along, what this means is that, imho, the G5 is too reliant upon that GPS signal. It should NOT require it for HDG mode AP usage. But it does. I wonder if in IMC, how well that G5 would work w/o GPS signal.
Power cycling the STEC individually and the avionics master separately fixed nothing. Avionics shop couldn't pinpoint it over the phone.
Hangaring, shutting everything down, rebooting avionics master brought it back up, working in HDG mode, GPSS untestable because I was inside the hangar.
Few days later I was flying along and lost GPS signal on my 430W. At the same time, I completely lost my AP in both GPSS and HDG. GPS signal returned about two minutes later and the AP started working again.
A'ha, I thought, and called my shop again. He said yes that definitely makes sense.
The G5 relies on the GPS signal for GPSS and HDG so if you lose that you lose your AP in anything but wing leveler mode.
I questioned him on why, then, do I have working AP through HDG while inside the hangar.
The answer was that when you first boot the G5 and that it sees it doesn't have a GPS signal, it emulates (?) heading through the magnetometer...? I'm paraphrasing here, but that's the gist of it.
Then, once it has a GPS signal, it doesn't like it when it loses it and won't "revert" to emulation so you do indeed lose HDG mode on the AP.
So then. The only thing left to test is to lose GPS signal in flight again AND THEN turn off the G5 completely and turn it back on. This is the only thing I didn't do the last time (power cycling the G5 fully). Doing this, I should at least get heading mode, during intermittent GPS loss.
If you've been following along, what this means is that, imho, the G5 is too reliant upon that GPS signal. It should NOT require it for HDG mode AP usage. But it does. I wonder if in IMC, how well that G5 would work w/o GPS signal.
