GNS 430 update?

[FB11]

I was lucky enough to have bought an aircraft earlier this year with a Garmin GNS 430 in it.

Any idea how to get it updated? The hundreds of pages tell me all about how to use it but not how to keep it up to date. I assume it's via the data card but over the web to a special reader? A piece of USB equipment to the card? Nothing came with it to my knowledge that allows the information, wherever the new databases get sent from, to be transferred to the unit.

FB11

[whiskeytangofoxtrot]

Yeah, you need the "Skybound USB card reader" which is basically a flash memory card reader with a Jeppesen logo in it, thus costing ~150 euros. Oh well. The GPS has a 8MB data card (iirc) in a slot in the front panel. There are two slots, but one contains a dummy card.

You also need a revision service from Jeppesen for the coverage area of your choice.

I got those for my club from www.sky-fox.com (http://www.sky-fox.com), though you can get them directly from jeppesen.com as well, or from pretty much any well equipped online pilot store.

You get a user name and a password and the skybound writer comes with software to install the updates on the card ~every month.

//Tuomas

[drauk]

Two options. Either way you start by pulling the datacard out of your GNS430. Then:

Option 1 is the easiest and thus most expensive. Call someone like Harry Mendelssohn (www.gps.co.uk) and order a new data card; they'll exchange your existing one for an up to date one. I think it's about 100 pounds a go.

Option 2 is to buy a Skybound Data Reader/Writer device. These are about 120 pounds and connect to a Windows machine (or as in my case, a Mac running Windows). You then buy a subscription from Jeppesen and it lets you download datafiles from the Internet each month and automatically writes them to the datacard.

The Jeppesen subscription is something like 270 euro a year for monthly updates covering Europe. The process of actually getting a subscription is, presumably, the direct result of their captive market situation. One calls an international number that you eventually find on their website, go through some voice prompts, speak to a German woman who then puts you through to an English woman. She takes your credit card details and is supposed to call you back, at some undefined point in the future, with a code, which she doesn't tell you what to do with. In my case, she didn't call because they'd had a lot of meetings and been busy because of the heat (I kid you not, that's what she said). Eventually when you get the code you go back to the website, dig around to find the right link, enter your details and your code, wait some undefined number of hours (more than 2 in my case), then you can run the software to do the update. Dreadful.

[drauk]

My post crossed with whiskeytangofoxtrot's. I didn't realise you can buy the subscription elsewhere; I wish I'd known (though I do now have a freephone number for Jeppesen in the UK if anybody wants it). The Skybound data writer comes up on eBay fairly often, though only goes for 20 quid less than a new one which you can get from www.afeonline.com.

[whiskeytangofoxtrot]

My post crossed with whiskeytangofoxtrot's. I didn't realise you can buy the subscription elsewhere; I wish I'd known (though I do now have a freephone number for Jeppesen in the UK if anybody wants it). The Skybound data writer comes up on eBay fairly often, though only goes for 20 quid less than a new one which you can get from www.afeonline.com (http://www.afeonline.com).
The process was same same, but different :) - no german speaking women, just lots (well, a few) of confusing emails back and forth, then in the end it worked out, I was left with a username and password for the skybound software. :)

The problem was, a jeppesen user ID is needed for the subscription, and I think sky-fox just relays the subscription to jeppesen. Since I didn't have a Jeppesen ID before, they had to request one for me, which caused a small hiccup to get started.

It has been working fince since we got the stuff started though. I got the reader and the subscription from sky-fox since I was ordering other stuff at the same time as well. I guess your favorite online pilot supplies store works just as fine.

[IO540]

Out of interest, doesn't the GNS430 have a cable connection option like the KLN94 has?

[Colonel Panic]

Out of interest, doesn't the GNS430 have a cable connection option like the KLN94 has?
No, there is no cable connection :*

[whiskeytangofoxtrot]

Yep, which forces you to enter VFR reporting points etc by hand, as those are not included in the Jeppesen database.

Or does anyone know of an easier way?

[IO540]

Yes. You buy a decent handheld GPS ;)

But seriously, this is a curious difference between the KMD550 MFD and (apparently; I have never used them much) the Garmin GNSx30.

The KMD550 shows VRPs and all sorts of stuff, whereas the Garmins reportedly don't. Yet, both use the same data licensed from Jepp.

[javelin]

Alternatively, find a buddy who subscribes and get his last update prior to him sending the card back, send your old one back - buy him copious beer, job done :ok:

[IO540]

I don't know about the Garmin CF cards but the Honeywell ones are hacked so they "can't be copied". They are retail labelled 40MB Sandisk cards but when plugged into a normal CF reader they show nothing; the filing system on them has been hacked to be invalid under windows. Looking at them as physical sectors shows some data but it's garbage, mostly regular rubbish data, and only about 2MB of it (on a 40MB card!). It's also spread out all over the card.

They sell an obsolete Sandisk CF writer for writing these cards; it contains a custom driver to make the card visible as a windows filing system, so the downloader can write to it.

I suspect they use some feature of a specific brand of flash memory. Suprising, given to expected long market life of the product. It's likely that Honeywell bought a large number of these up front.

The KMD550 is an off the shelf Intel linear flash PCMCIA cartridge which could be copied with some special PC interface equipment but the cartridge is so expensive to buy it's not worth the hassle.

[whiskeytangofoxtrot]

Alternatively, find a buddy who subscribes and get his last update prior to him sending the card back, send your old one back - buy him copious beer, job done :ok:

With the Skybound writer, you don't send the cards in the mail. You download the new update and it gets written on the card, over the old one. It's convenient, but sure, it isn't very hard to see what is the big business plan behind all this glass cockpit and GPS craze we have today..