GDL69A/Sirius Saga

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neptune2528
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GDL69A/Sirius Saga

Post by neptune2528 »

Hello all,

I have a saga developing between Sirius, Garmin and Diamond and nobody seems to want to own up to the issue so I thought I would throw it out here.

A little background: I have a 62 with G1000 NXi Phase I. When I took delivery of the plane it had the 30 day free audio through Sirius and that all worked fine. After the 30 days elapsed, the audio stopped working...makes sense. I logged into my Sirius account and added the Radio ID and added two packages: Pilot Pro and All Access. When I got in the plane, the Pilot Pro was showing in the Service Class of the MFD/Aux/Sirius pages but All Access was nowhere to be found. All weather was coming through fine, but no audio or channels showing up even after several refresh signals being sent.

After calling Sirius and Garmin and getting exactly nowhere other than each telling me to call the other, I read through the GDL69A manual (my spec sheet indicates my 62 serial number was getting a 69A, but interestingly the 69A is NOT listed in the equipment listing in the POH and neither is the GDL69SXN...more on that later) and came across an interesting nugget...it says the Data Radio ID and the Audio Radio ID CAN NOT be the same or else the unit will not properly function and each unit has two IDs. The manual also indicates there is a sticker at the back of the manual from the manufacturer with the Radio IDs for the unit installed. As it turns out, that sticker was never placed in my manual from Diamond and indeed the 69A had been set up with both the Data and Audio Radio IDs set to the same value, which conflicts with the manual.

I suspect what is happening is that when I picked up the plane, there was only the free audio subscription tied to one of the Radio IDs and it worked fine even though the 69A had both IDs set to the same value...i.e. the 69A can only have one subscription per radio ID. When I updated the subscription to have BOTH Pilot Pro and All Access, it only picked up one subscription: Pilot Pro in my case and not the Audio.

When I talked with Diamond, they indicated they always send out planes with the same ID in both places, which is in direct conflict with the install manuals. Adding to the mystery, the manual indicates the GDL69SXM DOES only use one radio ID for both data and audio. When I was talking with Diamond they thought SXM's were going in all G1000 NXis. So this then starts to add up - they thought they were configuring an SXM and put in the same radio ID when it was really a 69A in the aircraft and required different radio IDs. But how in the world could Diamond make that kind of mistake? If the sticker was in the manual as it was supposed to be I HIGHLY suspect it would be a 69A with two radio IDs, but Diamond never put the sticker in the manual like they were supposed to.

Anyhow, I suspect they will find it is a 69A with two IDs and then I will just have to figure out how to update the 69A through the MFD and re-configure my Sirius subscription, but if that is the case this is one cluster-F. Anybody else have a similar issue?
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Re: GDL69A/Sirius Saga

Post by Boatguy »

Similar in these respects:

1) My AFM contained numerous errors and bottom line did not document the airplane I received. I've verified some of these with Diamond and received instructions to remove pages, alter pages, etc. This is supposed to be an official document, signed off by Diamond and required to be on board. Very shoddy work.

2) My airplane, also NXi Phase 1 from the factory, had the transponder coded to the N-number of a Cessna based in Indiana. We flew half way across country before a controller alerted us that out tail number squawk did not match our flight plan call sign. The plane was taken to Garmin's field service rep and he was unable to correct the problem. Then it went to a Garmin shop in Scottsdale, and they were unable to correct it. Finally it went to an avionics shop in California and they corrected the programming.

Of course any work done to correct your problem should be covered by warranty.

You should be able to confirm the installed hardware from the System Status screen. Diamond didn't register my system with Garmin for the warranty so I did it myself. When you enter the serial numbers on the Garmin site it will display the LRU model number.
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Re: GDL69A/Sirius Saga

Post by neptune2528 »

UPDATE: I have made progress and it seems to mostly be a Diamond/Garmin issue with emphasis on Garmin. While the refresh signals seemed not to be working, I think they might have actually been working. When manually entering a channel the radio was indeed tuning into the channel. Once I confirmed this, Sirius pretty much said 'good luck' and was unwilling/unable to further troubleshoot even though there were still what appeared to be several issues like the channel listing not populating and the +/- only going to channel 1. By doing this, Sirius confirmed the radio was receiving and recognizing the appropriate service levels.

What I have so far:

Diamond - It looks like it is indeed the 69SXM and not the 69A, Problems:
- Spec sheet was incorrect
- Manual was not correctly completed with the sticker containing the Radio ID
- For whatever reason, the POH does not list the 69SXM in the equipment list...I will address this when I get everything working

Garmin
- Interestingly, the MFD only shows Pilot Pro as the service class and does not show All Access anywhere on the Info page. I find this odd.
- If I change the radio "category" to something like "sports," the channels are displayed. The issue apparently is when viewing the default "all categories." I learned on my 4th or 5th call to Garmin that there is a problem with G3000 devices where more than 255 channels can not be displayed and, as such, the 'all categories' view doesn't work and neither do the channel +/- when on 'all categories' with services containing more than 255 channels. They suspect that might be part of my issue. I come from the world of software development and it blows me away that they haven't come across this or have a definitive view on whether this problem affects the 1000NXi. They told me to first do a factory reset on the PFD and MFD to see if that works and then if not to try a Sirius package with less than 255 channels. I am not a big fan of the hard reset as it will lose all of my settings, etc. I will probably reduce the Sirius package to see if that works, but wow that is kinda crappy software development. In the end I don't need 256+ channels.

Interesting tidbit, the Garmin guy asked me to report back if it ends up being the "255 issue." He then said with that information they can reach out to Diamond to figure out what the issue is, somehow inferring that this might still be a Diamond issue. Outside of the issues listed above, I have a hard time thinking Diamond would have a hand in the problem if it was a "255+" display issue on the G1000 MFD, but what do I know? Regardless, still unbelievable it took an entire day on the phone with Garmin and Diamond and seemingly nobody knew of this potential problem.

That is the status as it stands. I hope to get to the bottom-bottom of this tomorrow and will update with final findings.
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Re: GDL69A/Sirius Saga

Post by Boatguy »

You probably know this, but you can export a Crew Profile to the SD card so you can restore your personalization settings in the event of a full reset.
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Re: GDL69A/Sirius Saga

Post by neptune2528 »

Thanks Russ - I actually did not know that...that will come in handy in the event a full reset is required.
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Re: GDL69A/Sirius Saga

Post by Boatguy »

I screwed it up the first couple of times so verify it's on the SD card before you do the reset.
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Re: GDL69A/Sirius Saga

Post by CFIDave »

Sorry you're having so much difficulty getting SiriusXM services to work correctly on your DA62. I've helped multiple new DA62 owners activate their subscription after delivery and never had a problem. SXM services (including music channels) on my personal DA62 with NXi have also worked perfectly for the past 3 years.

Garmin (and Diamond) haven't shipped the older "GDL69A" units (which use a different satellite) in years, so you undoubtedly have a current model "GDL69A SXM" unit.

I just checked the SiriusXM website, and what seems to be new is the "All Access" music subscription choice. I must have the lesser "Select" music on my plane because I don't get any Pandora channels and never listen to sports channels. I'm guessing that your plane's 3 year-old DA62 NXI Phase I software was written before or without "All Access" music and doesn't recognize the service.

Perhaps if you had SiriusXM downgrade your music to Select, your music subscription would work properly.
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Re: GDL69A/Sirius Saga

Post by neptune2528 »

UPDATE 2 - I changed my Sirius subscription to Sirius Select and sent a refresh signal. That did not have an effect and the G1000 still failed to show the "All Categories" view. I then did the hard reset of both the PFD and MFD as instructed by Garmin and the All Categories view did appear on the G1000, so problem solved (for now).

What I don't know is if I change back to Sirius All Access if it will mess up the All Categories view again. I had considered making the changes to see if this really is a channel count issue vs. something just getting fouled up in the Garmin equipment with all of the changes, but I have spent way too much time on this and it is working for now. Maybe someday I will find the extra couple hours to change back to All Access and see if the G1000 can handle it.
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Re: GDL69A/Sirius Saga

Post by CFIDave »

Glad to hear everything is working again.

This might be yet another example of what happens when DA62 Garmin software has not been updated -- we're all running 3-year-old NXi software on DA62s, still without any ADS-B IN, Flightstream 510 wireless cards, or more-recently-introduced SXM satellite radio services like All Access.
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Re: GDL69A/Sirius Saga

Post by CFIDave »

I just helped another new owner activate SiriusXM satellite on their new DA62 this week, and it went smoothly.

However, because of the info in this thread I made sure that their music subscription was only Select rather than All Access.

Then I remembered this:
https://www.diamondaircraft.com/en/abou ... -aircraft/

It specifically mentions that All Access music channels are free for 3 months. I wonder if Diamond actually tested this on their 3-year-old G1000 NXi Phase I DA62 software before making this offer?
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