new G1000 service bulletin DA40 TDi

[Graham291]

Dated 6 March 2013

http://www.diamond-air.at/fileadmin/upl ... -G1000.pdf

Anyone know what all that means?

Is it new firmware? I hope so...

[Keith M]

I think that some of the device drivers for G1000 components have been updated, but the system software is still 370.17.

Note that on page 7 of that MSB it states: "ChartView, FliteCharts and SafeTaxi are not approved". They need an update to the system software which Diamond refuses to provide.

[CFIDave]

It sure looks like new G1000 firmware. If your DA40D aircraft serial is 40.DS079 and subsequent, then it appears you can install Garmin system software 010-00628-00 shown on page 7.

What's interesting is that the PFD/MFD software version is 12.03, which is way more advanced than the version 9 PFD/MFD software we've been using on the DA40-180 avgas engine G1000 since 2009.

[Keith M]

Anyone know when the DA40D serial numbers changed to the 40.DS000 format?

[Graham291]

From Garmin:
"I was able to confirm that 0628.00 software is not applicable to fielded aircraft. It is only intended for new production aircraft built in China. European DA40D’s can only use the non-WAAS GIA 63.
The 0370.17 is the latest software for the European DA40Ds."

Anyone interested (with a European DA40D) in a crowd sourcing payment and getting Diamond to update TDi software by helping pay? If so, I'll try find out how much it would cost for Diamond to do the work and take on a new software update for an older aeroplane model...

Cheers

Graham

guess the 'S' in the serial number means made in China....

[Keith M]

Graham, I'd certainly be interested in that, thanks.

As that SB is for Thielert equipped aircraft, it seems that new ones made in China must have that engine ...

Keith

[reinhardj]

The software 0628.00 with GDU Software 12.03 can be installed in EASA approved DA40D as part of the EGNOS/WAAS upgrade. An STC is available for this upgrade from URBE Aero. We have successfully done this in the last week for our DA40D S/N D4.338.
As according to the Diamond service bulletin ChartView/FliteCart, SVT and SafeTaxi are not approved for this software, URBE is preparing an additional STC to support also these features. This STC will be available until end of the year.
During the upgrade we made some experience with the SD cards initialization. The previous GDU software 5.02 used small capacity -41 SD cards. After the upgrade, the terrain data base was not available, an error message "Wrong sys ID" was displayed in the AUX page. Investigations showed, that the G1000 system ID had changed during the upgrade from the previous generic 200000000 to a new number.
Furthermore new files "airframe_info.xml" were written to the SD cards after the upgrade which was not existing with the old GDU 5.02 S/W. Among other information, this file contains the G1000 system ID and the SD card hardware ID.
After the upgrade all data bases previously installed from Jeppesen were still working whereas the data bases downloaded from Garmin did not work. Garmin support told me, that the Garmin data bases are locked to the G1000 system ID, and because this changed during the upgrade, the original Garmin terrain data base did not work any more. A new download of this data base was enabled by Garmin support and we could update the card to full functionality. Garmin support told me, that Jeppesen is not using the system ID for the file locking, which was confirmed by the findings. Jeppesen seems to lock the data bases to the SD card HW ID, therefore the previously installed Jeppesen obstacle data base was working after upgrade as the SD cards were the originals with the original HW ID...
We confirmed this by generation of larger SD cards, as the -41 cards do not support the 9arcsec terrain data base (>1GByte) which is available for GDU versions between 10.x and 14.x and which is required for Synthetic Vision. As we did nor want to spend the money for a set of Garmin SD cards, we had to create new SD cards from scratch.
The new software also supports large SDHC cards, so we bought Sandisk 16GByte cards. We have installed the new blank SDHC cards in the PFD and MFD slots and powered the system up. The GDU S/W wrote the "airframe_info.xml" file to both cards. We then installed the Garmin terrain data base with the standard Garmin procedure. This worked perfectly because the system ID is correct. Then we installed the remaining data based from Jeppesen via JSUM as we have a Jeppesen PilotPack and had enough remaining downloads.
Both large SD cards created from scratch are now fully functional.
Our conclusion is, that the Garmin data base locking mechanism is much more user friendly than the Jeppesen mechanism, as Garmin supports generation of multiple SD (backup) cards without any problem, whereas the Jeppesen mechanism does not allow generation of backup cards as the files are locked to the SD card HW ID, which can really cause a problem in case of a faulty card.
By the way, Garmin support told me, that the price for a Garmin SD card is so high, because it contains all latest data bases...