I recently purchased a spare database card for our 430W unit (to rotate with the original one to ensure having the latest database update). The new card was delivered by Jeppesen.
Updates work fine on the PC but the card is not (always) recognized by the GNS430W unit . When taking it out and putting it back in sometimes fixes the problem and sometimes not. Did anyone else ever encounter a similar problem ?
Could it be a bad contact ? Should I try to clean the card reader and how should that be done ?
Any recommendations ?
If the other one works without a glitch, I’d claim warranty on the one you bought at Jeppesen and try another one. They are darn expensive enough.
If one card works reliably, and the other not reliably but sometimes, it does sound like a card with an intermittent fault.
Indeed that was my first thought too. I’ll contact Jeppesen. Thanks for now.
I found this interesting snippet on a US site:
On a “non-Xi” GTN, NavData, Obstacles, SafeTaxi and BaseMap are loaded internally from the SD card when you “update” and those products run from internal memory. Charts and Terrain are run from the SD card. When you load new Charts or Terrain databases the database update process simply “flips” the pointers to active and standby databases on the SD card (which is why it only takes a few seconds).
On the G500, only NavData is stored internally, the rest run from the SD card. On the G500 TXi all databases are loaded internally (the SD card can be completely removed when you are done with the update). On the TXi any SD card can (legally) be used for the update since the card is not accessed in flight.
The question of whether avionics cards are off the shelf SD (or CF) cards has come up many times.
It sounds like Garmin use non-hacked cards i.e. not specially formatted to prevent them being read or copied. It may be the same for Avidyne. To prevent database sharing, the S/N of the GPS is probably stored on the card. King used specially formatted CF cards. There are a lot of posts further back in this thread with various data points.
