Sirius XM weather not working

[Yariv]

Hi,

I flew from Paine field (WA) to Tracy CA for the long weekend and used the XM weather quite a bit to avoid large buildups on the way there. However, on my trip back earlier today it did not work. When I went to the weather page there was a message displayed on the MFD - “Detecting Activation”. XM music was playing OK though. When I checked the settings in the Aux group I noticed the audio radio ID was there but the Data radio ID was now blank. I had to use FIS-B for weather on this return trip. 
 

Is this an indication that the Garmin GDL-69a has malfunctioned?

Thank you,

Yariv

[GeeBee]

I had a similar problem. You need to try re-activation. I did several times with no luck, then sent my GDL-69a to Garmin. They said they found the problem and it worked for a while then quit. I finally threw in the towel and bought an exchange unit, and it has worked good since. 

[Yariv]

29 minutes ago, GeeBee said:

I had a similar problem. You need to try re-activation. I did several times with no luck, then sent my GDL-69a to Garmin. They said they found the problem and it worked for a while then quit. I finally threw in the towel and bought an exchange unit, and it has worked good since. 

who does the re-activation - is it Sirius XM? You are not referring to signal refresh, right?

[kortopates]

6 minutes ago, Yariv said:

who does the re-activation - is it Sirius XM? You are not referring to signal refresh, right?

If you aircraft hasn't been flown in awhile, like for extended maintenance of an avionics' install, you may need to get "refresh" signal sent to your radio ID. You can request this via online or by phone and it supposedly good for the next 3 hrs, so do it just before you aircraft is ready to power up.

https://listenercare.siriusxm.com/prweb/autoredirect/app/ExternalKM/help/SupportCenter/article/KC-1960/How-do-I-send-a-refresh-signal-to-my-radio%3F

Sometime you may have to a full re-activate if the refresh doesn't do it. Basically this is just like a a fresh new subscription. Garmin has a short publication on how to do this where you go into a menu on the unit your using to manage XM and sit there on that screen while it downloads all the wx products; which from memory took a good 20 minutes or so. But you had to keep it on the one screen till it cycled through all the wx products before you could proceed.  My recollection is that re-activate used the same refresh signal request with XM to kick off the process.

 

[Yariv]

On 6/2/2023 at 1:00 PM, kortopates said:

If you aircraft hasn't been flown in awhile, like for extended maintenance of an avionics' install, you may need to get "refresh" signal sent to your radio ID. You can request this via online or by phone and it supposedly good for the next 3 hrs, so do it just before you aircraft is ready to power up.

https://listenercare.siriusxm.com/prweb/autoredirect/app/ExternalKM/help/SupportCenter/article/KC-1960/How-do-I-send-a-refresh-signal-to-my-radio%3F

Sometime you may have to a full re-activate if the refresh doesn't do it. Basically this is just like a a fresh new subscription. Garmin has a short publication on how to do this where you go into a menu on the unit your using to manage XM and sit there on that screen while it downloads all the wx products; which from memory took a good 20 minutes or so. But you had to keep it on the one screen till it cycled through all the wx products before you could proceed.  My recollection is that re-activate used the same refresh signal request with XM to kick off the process.

 

Thank you kortopates. The airplane flies regularly. On this specific flight, it was working fine on the outbound trip and 3 days later on the trip back it did not work. They cannot send a refresh signal if there is no data I’d to send it to. Sirius XM told me that it is most likely a weather receiver issue. XM music was ok.

And now, a week later I flew it again and the first thing I checked after starting the engine was the XM info page and miraculously the data ID re-appeared. I was able to use XM weather on the flights since then.