Reports from the USA appear to confirm that Garmin have introduced a bug.
Those people whose fuel totaliser has its own “landing fuel on board” display capability (e.g. Shadin Microflo) should continue to display the figure on itself. These totalisers have two-way data flow: from the totaliser to the GPS, and from the GPS to the totaliser.
But those who have a totaliser which merely sends the fuel data to the GPS (like my old TBM700-style Microflo) have now lost the LFOB display.
N-reg pilots will get a fix from Garmin in due course but EASA-reg pilots are likely to get shafted until EASA approve the new firmware – unless they get a Garmin dealer to load it unofficially.
If this happened to me I would consider it extremely serious, because it screws up the “fuel certainty” on long flights.
Garmin have stated in the USA that they expect to fix this in August this year.
Not satisfactory that they seem to do so little regression testing. Loads of people have RS232-connected flow totalisers.
That will be for N-regs. EASA-regs will be without fuel flow until EASA gets around to approving it.
That will be for N-regs. EASA-regs will be without fuel flow until EASA gets around to approving it.
That is a very theoretical issue. In real life, it does not exist.
Most however are not affected. One is affected only if the internal GNS530W feature is used which is tucked away on the AUX pages. I have no use for it as I have a Shadin Miniflo and it uses the RS232 Aviation data output and displays fuel to destination and fuel reserve at destination. The JPI and other external units also are not affected. One would be affected if they did not have an external fuel flow indicator but did have a fuel flow input either as part of an air data unit such as the Shadin ADC200 or the device from Insight. These are not widely used in the US fleet. I have a Shadin ADC200 and Miniflo-L and have never had a need to use the internal fuel flow pages as my data is continuously displayed on the Miniflo.
Version 5.10 is totally optional and has no benefit for a EU user. In the US, there are two benefits, LP procedures can now have +V and the LP approach procedures that were deleted from the database because of a change in the US coding are back in the database at this version.
Thanks for the explanation, NCYankee.
Actually a fair number of people will be affected by this because there are a number of flow totalisers which don’t accept RS232 from the GPS and thus don’t display the LFOB on their own display. I have one, for example; a version of the Microflo-L.
Also a lot of people have the Microflo-L (or similar) but the installer didn’t connect up the RS232 from the GPS to the flow totaliser. I have seen several of those. Sure there is an easy fix but no European installer I have dealt with is likely to do it for less than a few hundred, especially if the back of the GPS is hard to reach.
I also think the LP/+V stuff is applicable to Europe, because some airports here which have the LNAV/VNAV procedures published had the +V “glideslope” un-published as a result. I hope I got the terminology correct. Cambridge for example was one of them.
There are APV approaches such as LPV and LNAV/VNAV that have official vertical guidance. In the case of the LPV, both the lateral and vertical guidance are provided by WAAS. The lateral has the same precision as a localizer approach. LNAV/VNAV is official vertical guidance with RNP 0.3 lateral guidance, albeit the vertical guidance is designed for Baro-VNAV equipped aircraft. In the US, a WAAS GPS is permitted to fly the LNAV/VNAV procedures using the WAAS for the vertical in lieu of the Baro VNAV. LNAV is a GPS procedure that only has lateral guidance, RNP 0.3. The LP is a WAAS type approach, same lateral as LPV (Localizer Performance) but without official vertical guidance because the obstacle environment did not qualify for LPV.
The +V is the symbol for advisory vertical guidance, or totally unofficial vertical guidance. It is not valid below the MDA. It only applies to approaches such as LNAV or LP which do not have vertical guidance as part of the procedure. A WAAS GPS manufacturer may provide +V on the LNAV or LP approaches as an optional aid. Up until Version 5.10, Garmin offered +V on LNAV procedures but not on LP procedures. With 5.10 +V is added to LP procedures. The annunciations are distinct from approved vertical guidance and appear as either LNAV+V or LP+V.
I seriously doubt there are any LP procedures outside of the US.
This was posted by Garmin on a US site:
It is a further concern since the ADC200 has been quite popular on IFR tourers here in Europe. Not many people have an ADC but those who have probably have the ADC200. It is also the unit I would have probably installed…
This stupid Garmin STC posturing (based IMHO on poor writing skills in the STC IM and subsequent over-interpreting) plus the currently broken fuel flow feature, plus the hardware problem with the ILS, are good reasons to delay installing a GTN.
Fortunately, the latest rumour suggests that PRNAV/RNAV1 are not going to be an issue in Europe before about 2017/2018 so the only current driver is LPV (which is not relevant to the vast majority of pilots here) and LNAV+V (which is applicable but you really want the latest fixed firmware which doesn’t have the missing approaches).
