Garmin Radios

[jlunseth]

This was prompted by a couple of the posts in the AI thread, and did not want to interrupt that thread.

Has anyone besides me had less than satisfactory performance from Garmin radios?  I got the 430AW figuring it would give me some extra range and ability to punch through weather to talk to ATC.  But I am finding that my old KY197 has better range and clarity than the Garmin.  There have been many times when I have been handed off from one ATC center to another, made the call on the Garmin and I get nothing, so I switch to the King and ATC comes in loud and clear.  The Garmin knobs work better for changing frequencies, but the Garmin is a distant second to the King in range.  Do I need to get this looked at? 

[Magnum]

Quote: jlunseth

This was prompted by a couple of the posts in the AI thread, and did not want to interrupt that thread.

Has anyone besides me had less than satisfactory performance from Garmin radios?  I got the 430AW figuring it would give me some extra range and ability to punch through weather to talk to ATC.  But I am finding that my old KY197 has better range and clarity than the Garmin.  There have been many times when I have been handed off from one ATC center to another, made the call on the Garmin and I get nothing, so I switch to the King and ATC comes in loud and clear.  The Garmin knobs work better for changing frequencies, but the Garmin is a distant second to the King in range.  Do I need to get this looked at? 

[kortopates]

I would asap. I get excellent clear service in both my 430's - only exception is taxiing adjacent to and below the airport tower and their antenna's - you should too!  You may be pleasantly surprised to learn the issue is from nothing more than a loose coax connection as is often the case. Since your description suggest you may always have had poor COM performance on the unit you may want to try checking for interference by turing off all other electrics and seeing if improves your COM signal and if so, re-routing cables will often correct it (assuming you can do this on the ground with radio checks to ground or?) . But perhaps best bet, is to have your shop investigate your Antenna VSWR as it should be < 2:1 and is not to exceed 3:1 per the installation manual (a value of 2:1 causes a 12% drop of output power, a 3:1 more than double). Either way, I would first suspect an issue between the radio and antenna, such as a loose or poor connection.

Good Luck!

[kortopates]

Good point about the squelch - easiest way to check that is to turn off the automatic squelch on the 430 by pressing the comm knob in too see the difference - especially to see if your picking up noise on the frequency (like interference). COMM sqelch is adjustable in the COM Setup page (a 64 value range) yet the manual indicates these values are set by the factory and seldom require calibration.

[jelswick]

I'm perfectly happy with my 430W's comm performance and use it most of the time as my primary navcom, but I do find the comm on my KX-165 is noticeably clearer.  So, I wouldn't say Garmin Comm in the 430 navigators is bad by any stretch, a good radio, but King seems stronger in that regard the same way I like Garmin's GPS better than the King ones I've flown behind.  That one is just personal preference though for Garmin. 

[Parker_Woodruff]

You will find the Garmin radios on the 480 and SL30 to be much better.  The 430/530 radios are still fine though.

[peter]

My 530W com performance is consistently worse than my KX155.  This was the case before the system was rewired last year for my Aspen upgrade, and persists today.

[John Pleisse]

Quote: peter

My 530W com performance is consistently worse than my KX155.  This was the case before the system was rewired last year for my Aspen upgrade, and persists today.

[Cruiser]

As a side note, I was flying the other day and there was a lot of chatter on the Unicom. Normal stuff, left down wind for runway xxx, touch and go.................

The only thing was the airport was 37 miles away. Now I am all for position awareness but I didn't really care where that pilot was. Too bad there is not a low power selection on the radio for those  pattern calls that would limit the trasmission to just the local area and the congestion on the channel.

[richardheitzman]

bad comm with a good radio is bad coax, bad coax connectors (usually corrosion), bad antenna OR corrosion under the antenna that prevents a good ground path. Easy fix but time consuming to find. Make sure your radio is seated well in the mount. Bad seat can lead to bad connections for the coax or partial connection which leads to high resistance. If you have access to a Watt meter put it between the antenna and the radio and see what your power out/reflect power is.

[Hank]

My 430W is stronger and more clear than my KX197. Checking your connections and antennas is probably a good idea.

[jlunseth]

Not corrosion, because this was a new installation last May.  It was happening then also, just took me some time to figure out.  At first I just thought it was weather interference or plain old being out of range, but eventually discovered that the 197 would pick up what the Garmin would not.  Also doubtful it is coax, again being a new installation, but I will have that checked out and also the antenna.  There's a good question, would they have reused the existing antenna or installed a new one that came with the Garmin.  It is a higher wattage radio than what was there before.  Original radio was the Comm in an Apollo GPS, GX60 if I recall correctly.  That would have been 7 or 8 watts.  The AW is 16 watts.  I should be able to contact New York from the minute I take off in Minnesota.