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Garmin 430 reception problem, possible Stratus interference?


JohnB

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I have a garmin 430w, mx20, and Ryan 9900 active traffic in my airplane. Over the last few months, I have been getting loss of GPS reception, with no bars or signal strength intermittently lasting 5 to 30 minutes and it says GPS inoperative, use alternate navigation. When it happened, several months ago, I was happy I had my stratus on as a backup, and I bought the external antenna for the stratus GPS and ADSB as sometimes my stratus would fall down off of its suction cup. So my shop exchanged out my 430w with a loaner one, and the same thing occurred. He replaced the GPS antenna and checked all couplings, tested the coax cables, and tested the connections, and now the same thing occurred. Now I'm wondering if it actually the stratus unit that is interfering with my 430w reception, as it is occurring more frequently since I now have the suction cup antennas for the stratus. I'll have stratus off next time I fly, I think I have a Bluetooth GPS receiver somewhere I can use, but I'm wondering if any of you have noticed any interference with using stratus in your cockpits, or if someone else has a solution we haven't yet thought of?

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My last cell phone seemed to interfere with my 530.  Upon start up it would take a long time to  'find' any satellites if I didn't power off my phone or put it on airplane mode.  Occasionally I would loose GPS in the air as you have if my phone was still on. I was told it couldn't have been my phone, but the problem was always immediately fixed when I powered down my phone. Since I got my new phone (same provider) I have never had a problem.  The troubled phone was a Nexus S.   

 

Dan 

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I have a garmin 430w, mx20, and Ryan 9900 active traffic in my airplane. Over the last few months, I have been getting loss of GPS reception, with no bars or signal strength intermittently lasting 5 to 30 minutes and it says GPS inoperative, use alternate navigation. When it happened, several months ago, I was happy I had my stratus on as a backup, and I bought the external antenna for the stratus GPS and ADSB as sometimes my stratus would fall down off of its suction cup. So my shop exchanged out my 430w with a loaner one, and the same thing occurred. He replaced the GPS antenna and checked all couplings, tested the coax cables, and tested the connections, and now the same thing occurred. Now I'm wondering if it actually the stratus unit that is interfering with my 430w reception, as it is occurring more frequently since I now have the suction cup antennas for the stratus. I'll have stratus off next time I fly, I think I have a Bluetooth GPS receiver somewhere I can use, but I'm wondering if any of you have noticed any interference with using stratus in your cockpits, or if someone else has a solution we haven't yet thought of?

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

My 430W antenna failed in a similar manner to how you're describing. It's pretty well documented: there was a run of GPS antennas that failed prematurely- run a quick google search: that could be your problem

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No clue about interference from Stratus, but I had similar symptoms with my GNS 430W antenna. Check out:

http://mooneyspace.com/topic/11114-garmin-430w-gps-antenna-problem/

Hugely helpful Mite, I didn't know this was described before, I am so hoping this is the solution. Mine still has the same problem after replacing the GPS antenna with a new one!
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My last cell phone seemed to interfere with my 530. Upon start up it would take a long time to 'find' any satellites if I didn't power off my phone or put it on airplane mode. Occasionally I would loose GPS in the air as you have if my phone was still on. I was told it couldn't have been my phone, but the problem was always immediately fixed when I powered down my phone. Since I got my new phone (same provider) I have never had a problem. The troubled phone was a Nexus S.

Dan

On my google search, there was someone who noted similar with his stratus on, with his 430 taking a very long time to boot up and find satellites with stratus on, and no problem when its off. Both garmin and foreflight said that stratus interference with the 430 was not possible. I'm not ruling out anything until my system is fixed.
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Hugely helpful Mite, I didn't know this was described before, I am so hoping this is the solution. Mine still has the same problem after replacing the GPS antenna with a new one!

 

Interestingly, when I tallked to the antenna manufacturer, there was no assurance that the whole problem was with the antenna.  I got the impression Garmin was still "exploring" the phenomenon.  In my case, a new antenna fixed the problem, but apparently there are known "other factors" which Garmin is either unable, or unwilling to discuss with respect to losing satellite lock.

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Interestingly, when I tallked to the antenna manufacturer, there was no assurance that the whole problem was with the antenna.  I got the impression Garmin was still "exploring" the phenomenon.  In my case, a new antenna fixed the problem, but apparently there are known "other factors" which Garmin is either unable, or unwilling to discuss with respect to losing satellite lock.

Oh really? This put a hold on getting a garmin upgrade ie 750 for me. I haven't heard from Garmin yet, but a new antenna didn't fix my intermittent loss of reception yet. Hmm. I was told to see if my reception bars go down when using com frequencies. Helpful info thanks.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Problem solved! My 430W was going out because of Stratus Suction cup Antenna interference. While on the ground today, I got a integrity message and no bars on GPS reception. I had previously unplugged my stratus unit which didn't do anything (was still running on battery) but this time I turned OFF my stratus unit, and all of the bars came right back up.

 

Just to test this theory again as both Garmin and Sporty's have told me that Stratus and a 430W cannot interfere with each other, I turned my stratus unit back on WITHOUT plugging in either the suction cup adsb or GPS antennas and there was negligible reduction in my 430 Stratus reception. Plugged in the ADSB antenna, no reduction. But the second I plugged in my suction cup antenna into the GPS external antenna port on the Stratus, all of my 430's GPS reception went to 0, which returned after I unplugged the antenna. This happened once, a while ago without a GPS external antenna, but it got substantially worse, once I purchased a suction cup antenna for the Stratus unit.

 

So this was an expensive solve, replacing an airplane GPS antenna which there was nothing wrong with, checking the cables, replacing the 430 unit, when the problem was Stratus GPS Antenna BLOCKING all reception of my fully operational 430W unit. 

 

So I am hoping that this post will help others solve an intermittent 430 failure if they also use a Stratus unit in their airplane, a lot cheaper than what I had to do to solve this problem.. If there are non believers to this (which Im sure there might be) Ill try to make a video if it happens on the ground again, but I now am using only the ADSB portion of my stratus and use a bluetooth XPS unit for my GPS position rather than using Stratus's. If the Stratus itself without a GPS antenna blocks my 430 reception again, I may just take it out of my airplane completely.  And i would recommend to anyone out there who has a GPS installed in their airplane to NOT buy a Stratus external antenna, and if you are noticing built in GPS issues and you're using Stratus 2, think about this being the problem rather than replacing everything else!

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