A pilot at my hangar said we overcomplicate GPS troubleshooting

He argued a lot of 'no fix' issues are just bad antenna placement, not box failures. Made me question our default bench-check process for a solid week.

3 comments

3 Comments

adams.linda29d ago

Yeah, that pilot has a point. I was reading an old article from a guy who installs avionics, and he said the same thing. He called bad antenna spots the "silent killer" of GPS signals, way more common than a full unit failure. It made me look at our own checklists differently, like we're maybe skipping the simple stuff. We had a plane last month with spotty signal that turned out to be a new metal plate installed right under the antenna.

the_nina28d ago

Hot take: Antenna first, always. My old boss at SkyTech Avionics had a rule, 80% of GPS tickets were antenna or cable issues. We wasted so much time pulling units for bench tests that just came back "no fault found." The install guys know this, but the bench techs live in a different world. It's a mindset shift from assuming the black box is broken to trusting the signal path is the real problem. That pilot isn't wrong, we make it way harder than it needs to be.

the_charlie28d ago

Our shop had a Garmin 430 that came back three times for intermittent faults. I was sure it was a bad board until we finally checked the coax run and found a kink behind the panel. That pilot is totally right, we jump to the box way too fast. Now my first move is a full signal path check, from the antenna mount to the connector. It saves a ton of time and stops you from chasing ghosts.