GNS 430 Comm Failures?

Hi all,

Well, I might have finally had an avionics failure in the Val. Today I launched with Louise, Danny, and Doug for a formation photo flight, switched to the air-to-air frequency after clearing the traffic pattern, and never heard anything more but squeaks and squelch breaks. Fortunately, my #2 Comm worked enough to accomplish the mission, but it has a fairly short range antenna, so it's not a good permanent solution,. Since we didn't get home until after sunset, I didn't do any troubleshooting at all - it could be as simple as an antenna connection that has corroded/come loose (it receives a little, but only strong signals), or it could be a unit failure.

Just curious if anyone else has experienced problems with the Comm side of their 430. I'll troubleshoot more as soon as I get the chance.

Paul

KISS

Iron:

Initial impression-------Antenna connection. From there; I'm lost!

Paul, no problems with the 430 com itself, but I did have uncommanded transmits. The problem was a tiny sliver of aluminum (wonder where that could come from?) that had found its way into the connector in the back of the audio panel. I found it by first eliminating the 430 (I had the same problem when selecting the other radio), and then found that jiggling the audio panel seemed to have some affect. Communicating with the tower was kind of interesting - think about how to do that one! Like having a stuck mike.

Ironflight said:

Hi all,

Well, I might have finally had an avionics failure in the Val. Today I launched with Louise, Danny, and Doug for a formation photo flight, switched to the air-to-air frequency after clearing the traffic pattern, and never heard anything more but squeaks and squelch breaks. Fortunately, my #2 Comm worked enough to accomplish the mission, but it has a fairly short range antenna, so it's not a good permanent solution,. Since we didn't get home until after sunset, I didn't do any troubleshooting at all - it could be as simple as an antenna connection that has corroded/come loose (it receives a little, but only strong signals), or it could be a unit failure.

Just curious if anyone else has experienced problems with the Comm side of their 430. I'll troubleshoot more as soon as I get the chance.

Paul

Click to expand...

Paul,
I would put this as a strong possibility and EASY to check if you have the multi-power inputs wired seperately to different fuses.
http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=9188

Kahuna

Thanks for the responses guys - I plan to dig into the antenna wiring when I am out there today or tomorrow - it really does seem like antenna. I do have separate breakers for Com and Nav, and have cycled both of them (first thing I did in flight) - no joy on that. Much troubleshooting to do!

Paul

GNS 430 Comm Problem

Paul,

I recently had a problem with my 430. The squelch was stuck on. The comm worked OK, it would transmit and receive OK but it was like it had a stuck mic. I took it in to the local avionics shop, they bench tested it and found the same issue.

Here is the kicker, Garmin charges a flat $700.00 fee to fix the unit. I called Garmin myself and spoke to one of the techs. He tells me they have to send the unit down the entire line and essentially re-certify the unit.

Not too good for a unit with about 250 hours on it.

Good luck with your 430

Mark Van de Bogert
N214MV

Troubleshooting...

Many thanks go out to Kansas City RVer's Keith and Mike who flew all the way down to Houston this morning (with a HUGE tailwind) and let me swap 430's for a couple minutes. With my unit in Keith's airframe, we had good Comm, so i know the Garmin is fine. When we put Keith's unit in the Val's tray - no Comm. Obviously, I have an antenna problem somewhere along the line.

I guess you call this good news and bad news - the good news is I can cross "send the 430 to Garmin with $700" off my list. The bad news is that I have to pull my panel and seat pan to chase the problem. But really, that's a 30 minute job, and now I can chase it knowing the expensive parts are OK!

But it's right at freezing here for the next couple of days - I think I'll wait for the weekend warm up before opening things up - there's always some fine-tuning to do on Mikey to keep me busy!

Paul

Fixed!

Well, that was relatively painless.....

Armed with the confidence that the 430 was fine, I ran out to the airport this afternoon to chase down the antenna wiring. I started by pulling the panel out just a couple inches and peering in with a flashlight and bingo! There was the problem - the BNC connector had somehow become disconnected from the back of the unit. Very odd....I haven't had the panel off for more than six months, and probably 150 hours. I can't quite figure out how it came loose - if it had fallen off right after panel maintenance, I could understand that I hadn't gotten it fully seated. But THAT long?

I'm going to chalk it up to some weird harmonic conversion in the space-time continuum....and I put a loop of safety wire on all the BNC's back there, just to be sure it doesn't happen again!

Val is once again cocked and ready for anything!

Paul

Comm

You mean I guessed right for once??????????