Apologies for being a bit late replying on this.
It is possible by contacting Garmin to go “off price list.” You can ask for a European only subscription which is what we have. We have not bothered with the SMS option either. On this minimalised plan the fixed cost is $60 plus VAT per month. The cost of the data requests is pretty small (obviously depending on how wide you have the parameters set). The downloads are pretty speedy.
I really like it.
To give you all some feedback, I have subscribed to this service and have just used it in anger on a 9 day tour to the South of France and back. I think it is very good and would not have flown a couple of the legs without it. It integrates seamlessly with the G1000. It gives you precipitation, IR cloud coverage, lightening strikes, winds aloft, METARs and TAFS. The G1000 weather dedicated weather page gives you all the items, however, the precipitation is displayed in the main Nav map page. If you select the ‘profile’ view on this page, it also shows wind speeds at the levels above and below your current FL and distance, very useful for planning the optimum cruise level. Unlimited SMS texts is included as well as 30 mins SAT telephone. All data requests are included in the monthly subscription.
Thanks to all for all replies.
Garmin Iridium weather radar alarmism
It has now been two times that my Garmin GSR56 Iridium Weather, displayed on my Garmin G500 MFD, shows heavy precipitation (red) that is actually light rain (visibility still VMC). The last time was flying to EHTE, it was shown as very close to EHTE, well east of Amsterdam, really above continent (counting polders as continent). After landing, we looked at other sources, both aviation (flugwetter.de) and “general consumer” (stuff like meteox), it showed:
Since I didn’t have both sources at the same time (and was a bit short on time), I didn’t make a precise comparison, and I’m not sure if it is the intensity of radar that was wrong (light shown as heavy) or the position (the England precipitation shown over the Netherlands).
I imagine the Garmin Iridium Weather uses the same raw data as “all other products” (that is, the radars operated by the respective national weather services?), so is there a possibility it is processed incorrectly, leading to wrong intensity being shown?
Could the GSR56 get a wrong GPS position and thus request a wrong area, which is then displayed offset on the G500 MFD?
I wonder how many pilots here have the GSR56? Later SR22s sometimes have it, apparently.
Could the GSR56 get a wrong GPS position and thus request a wrong area, which is then displayed offset on the G500 MFD?
The list of possible (software) failures is even a lot longer. The GPS position could be wrong but more likely the image encoding could be wrong or the radar image filtering could be wrong or the radar station itself could have a false return which is then filtered differently by different providers…
What I would look for:
- What did the previous radar images look like? Can you play back a movie of the last images which often helps to identify defects in the image.
- How did the radar overlay with other data? If there is a bad cell in the radar there should be something on the infrared and in most cases also strikes at the same position.
For illustration below an image from the ADL system which shows three cells in southern Italy right now. You see the infrared (blue), radar (green, yellow, red) and strikes (magenta). As all three sources show the weather at the same location you can be pretty sure there is no error.
Flyamax wrote:
What does that mean? You get your weather from ADS-B?
No. In theory it comes in via Iridium.
‘cept it doesn’t work.
Is the GSR56 working OK for voice and texts?
My GSR56 integrates well with the G1000. Connext weather, voice and text all ok.
