G1000 DB Update Method

[Rich]

... 5+ minutes to transfer them wirelessly to the panel -- running down your plane's battery.

5+ minutes is a problem? I'm surprised this would be so. In these posts I thought we were talking an hour or more of battery only. Granted, I don't have the same avionics, but recently, for example, I was doing a ground school session with my wife with everything powered just by the battery for like 30 minutes and the battery was still at 25.8 volts at the end. Ordinarily when I do various avionics maintenance things I do them in the hangar leaving the BatteryMinder hooked up and it's never produced a problem and battery voltage stayed solid. The newer systems must be quite a bit heavier electrical drain.

[Boatguy]

I think it's more than 5+ minutes. I did the wireless transfer from the Garmin iPhone app a couple of times and gave up. Much easier, faster and more reliable to insert an SD card.

[dmloftus]

Two sets of cards! Anyone else find it frustrating that the Garmin app requires you to do each set separately -- would be nice to be able to do one NAV and two SUP cards in one "run" from fly.garmin.com -- unless I am missing something?

Absolutely! Ridiculous that you have to do the top card twice to get two bottom cards. I've brought this up to Garmin's hotline several times but they just sigh and say they don't like the software either. Very poorly written.

[dant]

Ridiculous that you have to do the top card twice to get two bottom cards.

Yeah surely they've actually used it to update a G1000 system before? Just seems like such a weird oversight. Luckily for me the lower cards have been done first so I can just cancel the second top card.

Also I'm 100% entertained by how much discussion this raised. I really thought this was going to be a single response and everyone says "yeah that".

Thanks for all the responses. Seems like double sets is the easiest way.

Does everyone still just go for the 2GB Sandisk cards? Those are getting... expensive. Would be super nice if the G1000 supported something not so jealously guarded by their purveyors. I guess they aren't more expensive per se, just the same price for 1/64th the capacity.

[Donkadillapig]

Dave,
I'm G1000 Nxi and I've been doing the one card method. BUT it seems hit or miss on which slots actually make the database "take" in the system. Would you be as kind as to to elaborate which slots and in which order you use? I've resorted to SD card "whack a mole" it seems lol

[CFIDave]

Dave,
I'm G1000 Nxi and I've been doing the one card method. BUT it seems hit or miss on which slots actually make the database "take" in the system. Would you be as kind as to to elaborate which slots and in which order you use? I've resorted to SD card "whack a mole" it seems lol

With NXi, all you need to do is stick the single SDcard with all the database files on it into the bottom MFD slot. The files will then copy to standby and/or active for both the PFD and MFD.

[Donkadillapig]

Got it, thanks Dave. I think I've been over thinking it and trying every other slot other than that one first.

[pietromarx]

For Legacy G1000: If you subscribe to a database bundle (and hence want to keep all of your databases current), you need two sets of bottom cards (each with a card for the PFD and MFD) and a 5th card just for NavData. At home, load the same (most current) databases on one set of PFD and MFD bottom cards, and swap cards with your other bottom slot set out at the airport about once/month. Separately, download NavData onto its dedicated card at home, and then load into G1000 internal memory every 28 days out at the airport. Remove this "NavData" card and take it home.

The above is just one approach.

I get away with the usual three (3) cards kept in the airplane and have done it for many years. I do keep a laptop with me (for work), so that may count as the carrying device. Either way, the time involved is small.

As mentioned above, it is trivial to get the (elderly, but quite reliable) software to cache the data by just flashing any old SD card (like in your camera).

The updates at the hanger then take < 5 minutes for all updates regardless of size. It isn't much of a drag IMO.

[reinhardj]

..Ideally this would be something like... download the files to my laptop at home, take my laptop to the plane, then copy/install at the plane offline...

I am doing exactly this using Jeppesen JDM and Jeppesen PilotPak

[dmloftus]

For anyone that's interested, Garmin has a Data Card Guide on their website that explains all of the files on their cards.

http://static.garmin.com/pumac/190-01464-00_C.pdf

It's interesting that they specify "Use only SD cards supplied by Garmin or the aircraft manufacturer". As discussed in this forum, generic Sandisk 2GB SD cards work just fine. Some idiosyncrasies appear when you start using larger cards as anything 4GB or larger are actually SDHC (SD high capacity).