On Friday, September 18, 2020 at 11:43:57 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
...And then there's the Garmin 396 that came with the Stemme.Â* Turns out
you have to turn it on to keep the coin battery charged.Â* Once that one
died, the unit would not lock on to satellites.Â* Garmin wanted about
$400 to replace the $2 battery which is soldered onto the deepest into
the unit board.

I found a step by step tutorial on replacing the battery and, for about
$5 bought 4 batteries and replaced the faulty battery myself. The unit
locked right up!

Then there's my wife's car GPS.Â* Garmin told her the battery was not
replaceable and to buy a new unit.Â* I replaced hers for about $15.

And the GNS430W in our Cessna.Â* It has an intermittent, mostly on,
message that says that the VORLOC remote switch is stuck.Â* We don't have
that switch installed.Â* There's not even a wire connected to the unit to
service that switch.Â* Garmin wants over $1,000 just to have a look.Â* I
think I'll simply ignore that message...

I could go on.Â* I think their products work just fine so long as they
work but once there's a problem, get your wallet out.

On 9/17/2020 5:44 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Thu, 17 Sep 2020 15:59:56 -0700, wrote:

On Thursday, September 17, 2020 at 7:36:20 AM UTC-5,
wrote:


I had an early model Garmin Virb and found it to be quite good....until
it got glitchy, needed updates, sent back to Garmin for rebuild. That
one quit working. They offered an upgrade at 10% off retail. Each
exchange cost me something. Then Garmin just stopped supporting the
Virb and came out with something that looked more like a GoPro. Very
disappointing to have a company with such a good name treat one product
line like an out-of-wedlock child. No suggestions, sorry.
Thanks for sharing. After reading up on the heat issues with the Hero 8
I started looking at alternatives. The Garmin Elite 30 and XE were the
next two on my list but it looks for all the world like they are getting
ready to release something else which would put me exactly in the same
boat you were in. Maybe a Chinese knock off for 150 or less is the best
option until the dust settles. I found one with 4K 30fps and EIS (at
1040p) for 158 bucks but the color isn't anything to write home about.
I like Garmin stuff, if not their after-sale support.
They do have history...

I had a GPS II+, which was excellent for what I bought it to do - walk an
accurate bearing to pick up a Free Flight model after a long flight, this
being before we started putting light-weight hawk tracking transmitters
in our models). My GPS II+ started reporting that its internal coin cell
(used to maintain the GPS calendar and ephemeris if the AA cells it ran
on went flat and/or while they are being changed) failed just before the
guarantee expired. Took it back and got the coin cell replaced, was told
that it failed due to a dud batch of coin cells, but that would be the
last fix because the GPSII+ was now obsolete and would not be supported
in future. I thought that was a bit raw because the GPS II+ wasn't
exactly cheap at the time.

That was in 2002. Since then that unit (plus another I got off FleaBay as
a backup) still work just because they have always had AA cells installed
and replaced as needed, and the original, plus map, was my nav system
when I first started flying XC in club gliders.



--
Dan, 5J

Garmin can charge those exorbitant rates because they can - most people don't own a soldering iron, let alone know how to use one. Thank God for youtube and people, such as myself, who post DIY videos.

Tom