While we were in Barcelona we also did a short trip to the mountain airport La Cerdanya:
And here is the report from the return trip. It was planned as 4:10 and ended with a safety landing.
I think that’s called a “precautionary landing” in the UK/USA … right? (Peter?) Now let me read this …
That’s a great report Stephen.
But really scary is what you say about the R9 not handling the number of satellites… I’ve started a new thread on that under Avionics.
I think that’s called a “precautionary landing” in the UK/USA … right?
Possibly, yes, but I would call loss of nav plus a loss of fuel reading as an “emergency” and look for a reasonable place to land fairly soon – unless the remaining distance to run versus the fuel known to be in the tanks made a safe arrival a no-brainer (e.g. destination and all alternates being CAVOK).
Good report Stephan. I would probably have continued to my destination and not rebooted the PFDs because with phone, tablet and Garmin 695, there are plenty of GPS sources and even without any GPS at all, one can safely fly IFR in Germany. However the wrong fuel display would certainly have increased the stress level so a quick landing can be the best option. One should also consider how non pilot passengers feel.
I would think that your report has the chance of resulting in an AD that would ground all R9 airplanes, rightfully so. That’s not a small mistake, imagine it happens in a very difficult situation like RNAV SID departure from a Norwegian canyon airport in solid IMC.
Very well done. I would have done the same – although 23 Gallons for 35 minutes of flight is plenty of fuel. But it’s different to write that here and to look at the “8 Gallons” annunciation up there and become more insecure minute by minute …
By the way: Is that ONLY an R9 problem? I reda about it on COPA … but I wonder why it would not affect the Avidyne Entegra (8.01 in my case)
I would think that your report has the chance of resulting in an AD that would ground all R9 airplanes, rightfully so. That’s not a small mistake, imagine it happens in a very difficult situation like RNAV SID departure from a Norwegian canyon airport in solid IMC.
The curious thing is why this doesn’t happen in the USA too. The GPS satellites go all round the earth. Unless this is really an EGNOS issue only.
I believe there is much less Galileo and Glonass coverage over the US mainland.
Flyer59 wrote:
By the way: Is that ONLY an R9 problem? I reda about it on COPA … but I wonder why it would not affect the Avidyne Entegra (8.01 in my case)
The older Avidyne doesn’t have GPS of its own. It uses the Garmin GNS430s for all that. Different implementation …
achimha wrote:
I would think that your report has the chance of resulting in an AD that would ground all R9 airplanes, rightfully so.
The fix for this is available and in the hands of the FAA. Avidyne published on their own forum a status update and they expect a release sometime later this summer. Somewhere August was mentioned.
And to add that… As a software guy I really dislike the paperwork heavy certification process that prevents important fixes to be released to customers. I rather prefer a software patch with maybe another level of uncertainty than to have to live with such a defect for a very long time. There is much to improve in the rules for software development in aviation. I don’t have any first-hand experience in that world of software development yet, but I certainly would love an opportunity to maybe help improve it… At least I now do understand first-hand the importance for improvement 
Peter wrote:
The curious thing is why this doesn’t happen in the USA too. The GPS satellites go all round the earth. Unless this is really an EGNOS issue only.
All information always mentions the “EGNOS problem”. I would assume, like Achim said too, that over the US mainland there is less coverage, so the issue has not been detected. Some say that there wasn’t any flight testing done in Europe only in the US. That might explain it.
I’m happy to learn that this and also the one that prompted an AD forbidding some GPS approaches has been fixed. Now I’m eager to get the fix and have it solved for real. The user interface and lack of button pushing still makes it the better designed product. Unfortunately at the very end there is the difference between working and not working … I guess hope dies last.
