Terrain Warning Alarm Issue G500

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techflight

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techflight
I am a student pilot training on a Piper Archer II which has a panel equipped with a G500 and GTN 750. For some reason when landing specifically at KPAO the audible terrain warning starts annunciating on final and it does get annoying especially during touch and goes. This doesn't seem to be a problem at any other airport we've landed at, but for some reason the system doesn't seem to recognize that I am intending to land at KPAO and therefore should not be warning me of terrain. The database is up to date, clearly knows that KPAO exists and even shows the runway in synthetic vision.

What am I missing here, and is there any way to solve this or at least temporarily easily silence the alarm when it comes on? Apologies if this is missing information and thank you for any help with this!
 
My guess is the terrain warning on the G500 is configured with a minimum runway length longer than KPAO’s runway (it’s pretty short IIRC).
 
Ryan Klems said:
My guess is the terrain warning on the G500 is configured with a minimum runway length longer than KPAO’s runway (it’s pretty short IIRC).
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Thanks, that would make sense! Do you know how I could check / change that?
 
Is this a G500 or G500 TXi? It may also be the terrain alerting on the GTN that is generating the alert.
 
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Unfortunately, I don't believe you can see the configuration from the user side, would have to put the devices in to configuration mode to access the config. Assuming this is the flight school's plane, I think you should probably talk to them about the configuration and see if their maintenance provider would make the change. In the user side, you can however put the terrain alerting in to inhibit mode. On the G500 to put it in inhibit, navigate to the terrain view under the map group, and there should be a soft key for 'Inhibit' (4.5.3 of G500 Pilot's Guide). On the GTN, from the Terrain page, press menu, then press 'Terrain Inhibit' (11.5.6.4 of GTN Pilot's Guide). Only one of those should be necessary as only one of the systems should be configured to provide the alerts...
 
Ryan Klems said:
Unfortunately, I don't believe you can see the configuration from the user side, would have to put the devices in to configuration mode to access the config. Assuming this is the flight school's plane, I think you should probably talk to them about the configuration and see if their maintenance provider would make the change. In the user side, you can however put the terrain alerting in to inhibit mode. On the G500 to put it in inhibit, navigate to the terrain view under the map group, and there should be a soft key for 'Inhibit' (4.5.3 of G500 Pilot's Guide). On the GTN, from the Terrain page, press menu, then press 'Terrain Inhibit' (11.5.6.4 of GTN Pilot's Guide). Only one of those should be necessary as only one of the systems should be configured to provide the alerts...
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Got it, thank you! It’s my plane so it sounds like I’ll have to talk to an avionics shop to change the runway length terrain warning configuration.
 
Final update for anyone else that may have this issue in the future: it turned out to be that the minimum runway length configuration on the G500 was set at 3000' for some reason. A Garmin unlock card (~$50) is required to change this in configuration mode. After setting it to 1500', I am pleased to report that the problem is resolved.
 
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$50 to change a configuration? Garmin is getting as bad as Aspen these days. I guess we rent this equipment rather than owning it.
 
Salty said:
$50 to change a configuration? Garmin is getting as bad as Aspen these days. I guess we rent this equipment rather than owning it.
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The card is a dealer thing. I don't think you can just buy one as a consumer. It unlocks the config menu. On a G500 you can look at it, but not change anything, without the card. I suspect Garmin wants some liability protection from someone just randomly changing settings, then hitting a school bus and getting sued.
 
Ah, so every garmin dealer should already have one.
 
Do these units come pre-configured? Or can you request different parameters when purchasing?
 
Hang 4 said:
The card is a dealer thing. I don't think you can just buy one as a consumer. It unlocks the config menu. On a G500 you can look at it, but not change anything, without the card. I suspect Garmin wants some liability protection from someone just randomly changing settings, then hitting a school bus and getting sued.
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I just bought one online and I’m not a Garmin dealer. Figured it was perhaps cheaper and easier than having an avionics shop charge me 1/2 or 1 hour of time just to use their SD card.
 
techflight said:
I just bought one online and I’m not a Garmin dealer. Figured it was perhaps cheaper and easier than having an avionics shop charge me 1/2 or 1 hour of time just to use their SD card.
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Is this a change that must be done and logged by an avionics shop? Are you allowed to make these changes? See post #11.

I ask seriously as I fly an experimental and the rules are quite different for us ...
 
I'd really like to know where you can buy a Garmin G500 config card at all, never mind for $50. It's not available anywhere on the Garmin website, nor a few of their bigger dealers. The only one I could find on ebay was asking $440 https://www.ebay.com/itm/304798401935
I have a feeling we're not talking about the same thing.
 
Hang 4 said:
I'd really like to know where you can buy a Garmin G500 config card at all, never mind for $50. It's not available anywhere on the Garmin website, nor a few of their bigger dealers. The only one I could find on ebay was asking $440 https://www.ebay.com/itm/304798401935
I have a feeling we're not talking about the same thing.
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Yup, that's the one. $440 is crazy! Way cheaper from Yingling Aviation.
 
Daleandee said:
Is this a change that must be done and logged by an avionics shop? Are you allowed to make these changes? See post #11.

I ask seriously as I fly an experimental and the rules are quite different for us ...
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I'd be willing to bet that the answer is yes, that's supposed to be done by somebody authorized.

Specifically, at a minimum the AFMS or other documentation needs to be updated based on the new configuration. Signed and approved, blah blah all that standard stuff. Just going in and changing stuff is, unfortunately, not approved for us certified folks.
 
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