A Warning for Garmin Panel Upgrade Pilots

notdum

I fly a PA-32RT 300T Turbo Lance II and have for 30+ years. I recently upgraded my avionics, engine instruments, etc. to Garmin primary and backup products. I'd like to warn everyone about a severe potential condition that could affect anyone else that has done this or is planning to do this type of upgrade. This event could have ended very badly for me and a passanger, so I thought I'd pass along this warning about my experience.

I basically ripped out everything in my panel except my Garmin GTN750 and a GTX345 ADS-B in/out transponder that I've had for several years. All was replaced with Garmin gear: a GDU 500 TXI for the primary display in the GDU1060 format, a G5 backup system for full redundancy, the GMA-35C audio panel, and a GNC-255A nav/com. All is interfaced with my Century 2000 autopilot. I added synthetic vision and the Garmin EIS engine monitoring system. I'll probably write more about my experience with this upgrade in the near future, but for right now I'd like to tell you about the Garmin "rock-in the-sky" I experienced in the hope of preventing a bad situation for you.

After about 25 hours of familiarization and training on the new equipment, I thought I was competent for a night flight with a passanger. I had performed the requisite night operations prior to this flight without incident. My outbound daytime trip from Dallas Addison to Austin Executive was flawless and I even flew a practice GPS approach at KEDC. The return flight was right at sunset, so when arriving an hour later back at KADS, we were flying VFR at night. It was a beautiful flight, clear and smooth so my passenger was making a recording of the approach and landing. After being cleared to land number one, it looked like a great flight. On short final at about 300 feet AGL, the tower told me to go around due to the prior aircraft not clearing the runway. No big deal EXCEPT while powering the engine up and retracting the gear, my entire new panel disappeared - both my primary and backup Garmin flight display systems went dark. I mean pitch black, nada, nothing. I later determined they kept running, just the displays went dark. The GTN 750 remained lit...no help there however. Being in VFR and having about 2000+ hours in this plane I had no problem rejoining the pattern and landing without incident - sans insturments. I even took some pride in my piloting since, other than the go around, my passanger was clueless to the situation. (This was a good thing since my wife was my passanger and I like her to fly with me with confidence.) As I was taxiing to the hanger the G5 began to light up followd by the G-500TXI. Great.

I figured, no big deal, I'd visit the radio shop the next day and see what's going on. However a good night's sleep started me wondering what if this happen in IFR. Answer: Someone else would be writing this article. So I visited the radio shop and after I explained the situation the owner said, "Why didn't you shine a flashlight on the light sensor?" I took this with good humor and suggested it might be a bit difficult since I was unprepared for both the primary and backup flight displays to fail in unison. I also pointed out that at the time, I knew not where either light sensor, primary or backup, was located, much less trying to find my flashlight while executing the go around. My solution was to have the radio shop set the minimum brightness so that neither instrument can actually fade to complete darkness again. According to the Garmin manual, these instruments are not able to have a completely black display, but apparently this is not the case at all. To this day, no one at Garmin or the radio shop can tell me why this happened - not a real confidence builder. A couple of weeks later I attended the Garmin factory training class for the G500TXI and told the instructor about my experience. He was skeptical and said this wasn't possible. So I demonstrated this for him on my in-class training G500TXI kiosk. Guess what? By placing my finger over the light sensor, the class room 500TXI faded all the way to darkness, just like my equimpent. The instructor told me he would, "Tell the engineers." I also called the Garmin pilot support line, twice, and got an equally lukewarm response, so I'm not sure if the factory correcting the situation.

Since then I've spoken with a couple of other Garmin instrument pilots who have had similar experiences with their Garmin flight displays, so I'd recommend checking this in your plane if you have a Garmin flight display. It's not hard, just put your finger over the light sensor for 15 or 20 seconds and see if you can read the display. Good flying.

Scott Sherer

Thanks for your experience with your new garmin equipment. I'm sure everyone will take it very seriously.

arrow76r

Interesting! When I added the second G5 (HSI) I went through the brightness setup procedure by holding my finger over the light sensor and adjusting the brightness setting. I didn't see a full dark screen but admittedly I wasn't looking for one, only a minimum brightness suitable for night ops.

skylord

Yikes. Thanks for sharing this experience, I'm getting my G3x in a few weeks and will try it out. I'll let everyone know.

u2drvr

You should file an ASRS report on this incident.

Pa32plt

I also have G600 for 10 years
My unit did not go black but was very dim
Taxied at PHL to the active with flash light in my mouth!!
At night I now set up the brightness before I taxi
Problem. It defaults back to dim. Why?
Also how about a "ball" not a flat tab for slipping?
Have an all glass airplane. No vacuum
Have Sandia as prime and back up with Li ion battery
That cool Blue PA32 in the Hartzell Scimitar prop ad is our plane poster child. Used for STC fly off

skylord

Still haven't got the Arrow back yet, but I'll be sure to check this out with the G3X.

greygoose

I have a GTN 750 in my PA-32=300. Had this exact thing happen in a daylight VFR flight. Very disturbing. Glad I had the iPad as a display backup. Has only happened this once, but will admit, I do not have complete trust in the 750.

Ben