Garmin Pilot Issues - 6.0.2

[azpilot]

Hi there. I'm not sure if this is the right place, or the right forum to post this, but I figured I'd give it a shot. I have an Android tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab) running Garmin Pilot. Garmin did a recent update that has been causing some issues. I have my local sectional downloaded, but as I was flying around today, and I moved into a new portion of the sectional, the new portion of the map would not come up. I don't rely on the tablet for information, so I was OK, but it sure is annoying. Is anyone here running the Garmin Pilot app, and have you experienced any issues with the new version that Garmin has put out? 6.0.2

 

[citizen5000]

Hi there. I'm not sure if this is the right place, or the right forum to post this, but I figured I'd give it a shot. I have an Android tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab) running Garmin Pilot. Garmin did a recent update that has been causing some issues. I have my local sectional downloaded, but as I was flying around today, and I moved into a new portion of the sectional, the new portion of the map would not come up. I don't rely on the tablet for information, so I was OK, but it sure is annoying. Is anyone here running the Garmin Pilot app, and have you experienced any issues with the new version that Garmin has put out? 6.0.2

The Android version is no where near as solid and useful as the iPad version (8.7.1). Suggest you switch.

 

[azpilot]

The Android version is no where near as solid and useful as the iPad version (8.7.1). Suggest you switch.

I'm considering it, but I don't have an iPad. What model iPad would you recommend?

 

[Salty]

I'm considering it, but I don't have an iPad. What model iPad would you recommend?

The newest one available. It doesn't run well on the older processors.

 

[citizen5000]

I'm considering it, but I don't have an iPad. What model iPad would you recommend?

We us an iPad Air. And btw, we are not Apple fans. The iPad was a gift we had on a shelf till we decided to get Garmin Pilot. We also own Samsung and Microsoft tablets. But found out after trial and error the product is behind on Android versus the Apple version.

 

[azpilot]

The newest one available. It doesn't run well on the older processors.

I wonder if that's the problem I'm having now. My tablet is about two years old.

 

[Clip4]

Generally, what do you guys evaluate the Pilot App? Considering it so I can go back to Jepp charts.

 

[Jay Honeck]

If you do a search for Garmin Pilot Tips & Tricks, you will find a very extensive thread on Pilot for Android that goes back years.

I've used this product on Android tablets since it first came out in 2012. It is rock-solid stable on Android. I'm running it on a Galaxy Tab S, too, and have not had the issue you describe. It will be interesting to see if anyone else here pipes up about having this problem.

Anticipating that it's probably a problem with your installation, the easiest fix would be to simply download the app again, and upload the offending Sectional chart again.

 

[Jeff Oslick]

The last update did cause a similar problem for me, and I'm running Samsung S2 with tons of memory, so speed/memory wasn't the issue.

I completely uninstalled and reinstalled GP and reloaded all of my maps, and it has behaved fine since then. I agree there was some kind of glitch on the last update that made you think the maps were loaded when they were not.

Of course, you should always disconnect from WiFi and check stuff like this before every flight, just in case.

 

[jimhorner]

The Android version is no where near as solid and useful as the iPad version (8.7.1). Suggest you switch.

Have to agree with that. I used an Android tablet and phone for quite some time, but I finally got tired of seeing all the new features of GP being available for months on the iPad before finally showing up on the Android. Finally switched a year ago, and it is nice to have the new GP features right now instead of waiting months.

Not sure why Garmin does it this way.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Jeff Oslick]

Not sure why Garmin does it this way.

I suspect they do it this way 1) because there is more competition on the EFB front for iPads; and 2) iPad/iOS is a more uniform operating system than Android - more work to make sure features work across multiple platforms and operating system versions.

 

[citizen5000]

I wonder if that's the problem I'm having now. My tablet is about two years old.

My iPad air is three years old. Runs perfectly.

 

[Jay Honeck]

I suspect they do it this way 1) because there is more competition on the EFB front for iPads; and 2) iPad/iOS is a more uniform operating system than Android - more work to make sure features work across multiple platforms and operating system versions.

Exactly right. Android is the most popular operating system on Earth. It is so popular and stable that there are still many iterations of it out in the wild, all running concurrently on gazillions of platforms.

It is also infinitely customizable. Thus, you have Samsung creating it's own front end for its Android products, which means that an app like Garmin Pilot must be flexible enough to deal with that.

All of this makes writing software for it much more difficult. Ironically, Android's greatest strength -- its flexibility -- is also it's greatest weakness, at least when it comes to apps like Pilot.

That all said, I love the product, and wouldn't think of launching on a cross country flight without it -- even though we have a very capable EFIS in the panel. It is our go-to product for everything from fuel prices to restaurants near the field.

Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

 

[MKing]

If you do a search for Garmin Pilot Tips & Tricks, you will find a very extensive thread on Pilot for Android that goes back years.

I've used this product on Android tablets since it first came out in 2012. It is rock-solid stable on Android. I'm running it on a Galaxy Tab S, too, and have not had the issue you describe. It will be interesting to see if anyone else here pipes up about having this problem.

Anticipating that it's probably a problem with your installation, the easiest fix would be to simply download the app again, and upload the offending Sectional chart again.

My experience, exactly. All the 'new' GP features that seem to debut on iOS fall into a category someone else cleverly labeled as NIBU.....'Nice Idea, But Useless'. SV, logbook, glide rings, etc all fall into this category, in my opinion. I have run GP on a Nexus 7, 2nd Gen for 3 years with zero problems and just upgraded to a Samsung Tab 2S 8.0. Speed improvement was impressive and the larger OLED screen screen is great. The more useless crap features these programs get loaded with the slower they run and the more likely they are to have bugs that will hang them up. This is not my primary navigation tool, so don't give me stuff I don't want or need. Bug-free weather, traffic and approach plates are my real need.... everything else is fluff.

Monte

 

[Matthew]

Hi there. I'm not sure if this is the right place, or the right forum to post this, but I figured I'd give it a shot. I have an Android tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab) running Garmin Pilot. Garmin did a recent update that has been causing some issues. I have my local sectional downloaded, but as I was flying around today, and I moved into a new portion of the sectional, the new portion of the map would not come up. I don't rely on the tablet for information, so I was OK, but it sure is annoying. Is anyone here running the Garmin Pilot app, and have you experienced any issues with the new version that Garmin has put out? 6.0.2

The only times I've seen that happen is if you don't actually download that particular chart. If you fly off the sectional onto another one that isn't downloaded, or zoom from sectional to TAC and haven't downloaded the TAC this can happen. Put the tablet into airplane mode and move around and zoom in and out on different chart areas and see if you can recreate that problem.

 

[Jim Rosenow]

I'm on my second Nexus 7/Garmin Pilot. 6.0.2 is working well on it. Only one trip since the update tho.

Jim

 

[Jay Honeck]

My experience, exactly. All the 'new' GP features that seem to debut on iOS fall into a category someone else cleverly labeled as NIBU.....'Nice Idea, But Useless'. SV, logbook, glide rings, etc all fall into this category, in my opinion. I have run GP on a Nexus 7, 2nd Gen for 3 years with zero problems and just upgraded to a Samsung Tab 2S 8.0. Speed improvement was impressive and the larger OLED screen screen is great. The more useless crap features these programs get loaded with the slower they run and the more likely they are to have bugs that will hang them up. This is not my primary navigation tool, so don't give me stuff I don't want or need. Bug-free weather, traffic and approach plates are my real need.... everything else is fluff.

Monte

"NIBU". I like that!

Sounds like what has happened to Microsoft Word, Quickbooks, and a whole host of other software titles that were once sleek and cool, and became laggy, bloated, and mostly worthless, after developers larded on "features" no one wanted.

I just landed from a 30 minute flight. Took a pic of Sandfest, the biggest festival of the year, down here on the coast, below. Today is the last day, and the crowds were still impressive. (This is one little section of our 15 mile long beach.)

As always, Garmin Pilot worked flawlessly.

Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

 

[Jeff Oslick]

The only times I've seen that happen is if you don't actually download that particular chart.

This is true, but in this case there was a bug that made it look like the chart downloaded when it had not. Or maybe it did download, but somehow the program was incapable of reading it. It wasn't just the sectionals, it was the approach charts too. As I said, a reinstall fixed the glitch.

 

[midwestpa24]

Of course, you should always disconnect from WiFi and check stuff like this before every flight, just in case.

I learned that lesson today. This weekend I let Garmin download the next cycle of plates for the update. Flew a trip IFR today and halfway through realized I couldn't access any approach plates. Fortunately it was severe clear and I didn't need a plate for an approach. Won't do that again.

 

[mtuomi]

Seems to be a common bug, I've had that a few times as well.

 

[airheadpenguin]

I had that in my last update cycle, it seems to have 2 entries for every state under flight charts one downloaded one not. Fortunately hitting update all again fixed it but its getting piggy on memory 32GB is almost not enough

 

[RotorDude]

I have been using Garmin Pilot Android on Nexus 7 tablets (one per yoke, both 2013) since 2013 or so. Reliability is quite good, though the app sometimes (maybe once every few flights) restarts spontaneously (but always remembers where it was, so it's normally a non-event since it resumes what it was doing).
My suspicion is that when weird things happen (like the map not refreshing properly that the OP describes or the restarts) it's related to the tablet, not the app. I say this because I noticed that switching to a newer N7 made a big improvement in stability. It could also be other software that's running in background, so when things got bad in the past I'd use a killer app to zap everything else. But lately it's been rock stable functionally, except for the odd restart.
All in all, I am very happy with my setup, both the Garmin Pilot Android as well as the Nexus 7's.

 

[azpilot]

I think I figured it out. My tablet is severely memory limited, so I purchased an SD card. Garmin Pilot has a setting that enables using the SD card for storage of all the downloaded items like charts and TACs. It appears that with the most recent update, GP is not handling the SD cards as well. I uninstalled and reinstalled GP and re downloaded all of the charts. I ran into the same memory problem as before, and re-enabled the SD card memory. GP went right back to the same problem as before. I uninstalled and reinstalled GP a second time and DID NOT enable the SD memory, and it works MUCH better now. I had to clean out a bunch of garbage apps to make it all work, but that was probably a good idea anyway.

As I mentioned before, my tablet is a couple of years old. It has developed a battery life problem, and on top of that it is severely memory limited. I think it only has 16 GB of memory. I am going to pull the trigger on a new iPad here soon. I just need to make a decision about which model.

Any thoughts on how much memory I need? Is the 64 GB enough?

 

[Matthew]

Make sure to let Garmin tech support know. Sometimes they get right on problems they can recreate.

 

[mkosmo]

Make sure to let Garmin tech support know. Sometimes they get right on problems they can recreate.

No joke. I've reported quite a few bugs to them... the important ones they usually had reproduced and staged for release within a week. That being said, they didn't always get released that quickly.

 

[Matthew]

No joke. I've reported quite a few bugs to them... the important ones they usually had reproduced and staged for release within a week. That being said, they didn't always get released that quickly.

Yeah, I found a problem once. Wrote up a short procedure on how to reproduce it, emailed them, and got a note the next day saying they could re-create it. Less than a week later a patch was released and that problem had been fixed, too.

 

[Sinistar]

We have been using Garmin Pilot for about 8 months now. Still very pleased with it. First 28 flights were running on a Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4, never had any problems in flight. That tablet had less memory than our newer tablet and I tried the option to store on external SD card but it locked up one day downloading sectionals so I stopped doing that.

Now we're running Pilot 6.0.2 on a Galaxy Tab S2 8", this setup is awesome!! 10 flights so far on this setup. A couple days ago the tablet updated to Nougat (7) and two flights so far with no issues running latest Android + latest Pilot. The screen on the new tablet is great in bright light. And so much memory, all USA sectionals, highest resolution databases, etc and still no need to use the external card.

We also tried on a iPad min2, was so weird to see all theses new features but in the end they just didn't matter enough to warrant going with another ipad. The glide ring did look cool though.

 

[SbestCFII]

Hi there. I'm not sure if this is the right place, or the right forum to post this, but I figured I'd give it a shot. I have an Android tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab) running Garmin Pilot. Garmin did a recent update that has been causing some issues. I have my local sectional downloaded, but as I was flying around today, and I moved into a new portion of the sectional, the new portion of the map would not come up. I don't rely on the tablet for information, so I was OK, but it sure is annoying. Is anyone here running the Garmin Pilot app, and have you experienced any issues with the new version that Garmin has put out? 6.0.2

Garmin does well on Android, but the Apple Version is better. Garmin vs. Foreflight pros and cons are all basically equal in the end, but Foreflight doesn't do Android so there is no option. WingX is a good program that runs equally well on both platforms...maybe you should try it out. Both Garmin Pilot and WingX are less expensive than Foreflight for full functionality.