Garmin 396 Reception Problems - Again

Had the same issue.

Traced it to a bad antenna. Garmin FedEx'ed me a new one. The problem
is demonstrated when in line of sight to cell phone towers on certain
frequencies. Test it out around town, and you'll see what I mean.

--Dan

Mike Spera wrote:
Its bbbbaaaaaaacccccckkkkkkk.

I thought we had the 396 reception problems solved with the unit swap
and upgraded firmware. On climb out the thing lost its lock again and
continued to do so until I changed course. That ain't gonna be an option
on a plan in IMC (uh, center, I need to change heading 30 degrees or so
to get my VFR GPS back on line...).

I tried switching freqs. on the nav and com radios to avoid harmonic
interference. No difference. I wonder why this cropped up after 3+
months of problem free reception??? Last time this was happening, I
tried running the unit on batteries, switching the GPS antenna around,
and a host of other things. Nothing helped until I upgraded the firmware
on a new unit. It has been solid since then with 6+ sats near the top.

Now, garbage again.

Anyone else see this problem on theirs?

Thanks,
Mike

Dan wrote:
Had the same issue.

Traced it to a bad antenna. Garmin FedEx'ed me a new one. The problem
is demonstrated when in line of sight to cell phone towers on certain
frequencies. Test it out around town, and you'll see what I mean.

Dan,

I've noticed that when my unit goes deaf, switching antennas from the
external "hockey puck" unit to the stubby vertical has no effect so we
may be talking about the same symptoms but a different cause.

Just curious -- did they replace your puck antenna with a new model or
just replace the one you had? Also, just so we can nail this down, what
model antenna do you have now?

-Doug

--------------------
Doug Vetter, ATP/CFI

http://www.dvatp.com
--------------------

Doug Vetter wrote:

I've noticed that when my unit goes deaf, switching antennas from the
external "hockey puck" unit to the stubby vertical has no effect so we
may be talking about the same symptoms but a different cause.

Our 196 has the same problem. Switching antennas has no effect.

I've noticed that when my unit goes deaf, switching antennas from the
external "hockey puck" unit to the stubby vertical has no effect so we
may be talking about the same symptoms but a different cause.




I tried the stubby when the thing used to crap out and it did exactly
the same thing.

Mike