430 up in smoke

[kevin47881]

Was talking with the owner of the plane I'm involved with yesterday at the fly-in. One of the other folks that flies it had it out last week and the 430 went up in smoke. Literally.

Speaking with the owner, they were up doing some recurrency work when the GPS went black and smoke filled the cockpit. They pulled the breaker, opened the whiskey window to pull the smoke out and landed uneventfully. The owner (A&P IA) pulled the head and confirmed it's toasted. The wiring to the unit is unaffected. The WAAS upgrade was done over a year ago (if memory serves me correctly) so we doubt there is any correlation/causation. He sent the unit back to Garmin for inspection and possible repair.

Has anybody else seen one of these units go up in smoke?

 

[AdamZ]

Yikes that must have given a bit of pucker. Hope he finds the source.

 

[Paul Allen]

I doubt this will be a cheap repair!

 

[jesse]

I've never had a 430 fail me. It's been the most reliable piece of avionics that I've ever flown with.

 

[mikea]

I doubt this will be a cheap repair!

Time to look for an old 430 on craigslist. :wink2:

 

[bbchien]

Sigh. Aviation sure airn't cheap.....

 

[kevin47881]

Hopefully we'll have a price this week. Either way, all y'all are right, it won't be inexpensive.

 

[Dan Thomas]

Hopefully we'll have a price this week. Either way, all y'all are right, it won't be inexpensive.

Might be surprised. When we need our Garmin stuff repaired, we send it directly to them via FedEx and they send it back same way, same model and serial number but sure looking like a new unit, for a really reasonable flat rate.

Dan

 

[kevin47881]

Might be surprised. When we need our Garmin stuff repaired, we send it directly to them via FedEx and they send it back same way, same model and serial number but sure looking like a new unit, for a really reasonable flat rate.

Dan

I'd be giddy with that kind of surprise.

 

[Capt.Crash'n'Burn]

Was talking with the owner of the plane I'm involved with yesterday at the fly-in. One of the other folks that flies it had it out last week and the 430 went up in smoke. Literally.

Has anybody else seen one of these units go up in smoke?

I was about to say that you got it wrong, 420 is up in smoke.

 

[zebra]

Might be surprised. When we need our Garmin stuff repaired, we send it directly to them via FedEx and they send it back same way, same model and serial number but sure looking like a new unit, for a really reasonable flat rate.

Dan

I'd certainly be surprised as that hasn't been our experience. We'll know soon enough; our 430 needs a new board to fix a com problem so we are getting the WAAS upgrade at the same time. They'll include the repair in the price of the upgrade, and if they can't repair ours we'll get a different one. I hope it works that way. They were having problems with the early 28v units.

It took them 3 tries to get us a working WX antenna, with us paying shipping to send an antenna and then the 496 unit back and forth each time.