I was doing a long flight in the DC-3 (retro) when, after 6 hours over Africa when I noticed both the GNS530 and 430 were showing the message "No GPS Position", and indeed they seem to have lost sattelite connection.
I changed the autopilot to heading mode and switched off / on the avionics, hoping that would reset the GNS's. They were indeed able to connect but I noticed the GPS signal was weak and only 5 sattelites were found.

Has anybody noticed something like this? Is this realism or a MSFS glitch?

I saw something like that on television. Lost of contact. Strange clanging noise on the right main engine.

 

 

Lost contact. Clanging noises near the engine.

6 hours ago, orchestra_nl said:

Has anybody noticed something like this? Is this realism or a MSFS glitch

Not sure it's a glitch actually?

working title GNS430/530 has modelled  GPS satellite positions matching real life. That level of detail is amazing for default avionics 🙃

As per their release notes :

"Full working simulation of GPS, including real-world data based satellite positions, SBAS coverage"

6 hours ago, orchestra_nl said:

I noticed the GPS signal was weak and only 5 sattelites were found.

There goes your RAIM fault detection and exclusion (in particular) out the window.

Edited January 13, 20242 yr by SAS443

Wow, amazing if they do actually use realtime GPS Data for the whatever position you are at (Though I doubt that very much)

What part of Africa?, lots of strife over there maybe someone was jamming

3 hours ago, Lonesome Cowboy Burt said:

What part of Africa?, lots of strife over there maybe someone was jamming

I was just about to begin my approach to DTNH (Tunesia), coming from DATG in Algeria after a 6 hour flight in the DC-3.
It was already dark when I arrived at the STAR for runway 27and as I had not visited that airport at nighttime before I preferred to let the autopilot do its job for most of the procedure.

5 hours ago, SAS443 said:

Full working simulation of GPS, including real-world data based satellite positions, SBAS coverage

Thanks for that. I did not read it but it is good to know they have modelled this. I suppose not being able to get a FPS fix is a rare event in real life but this shows you to always be prepared to fly without it, even in MSFS. In this case I could look up the flightplan in Little NavMap and could take note of the heading I was supposed to fly, as wel as my position in relation to the airport.
In reality you don't have that luxury so you must rely on your situational awareness and your written notes. Off course, IRL there would be a 2nd pilot to help out.
 

And it happened again, now I have pictures:


It happened just as I crossed DGO in Northern Spain

Look at your status on the left, it says « acquiring » meaning it has no signal yet, then you cannot have a GPS position.

19 minutes ago, Bernard Ducret said:

Look at your status on the left, it says « acquiring » meaning it has no signal yet, then you cannot have a GPS position.

You wrote "yet", but you should have written "anymore". This happened during a 6 hour flight, so it had already acquired the GPS on startup
Somehow the GPS is losing its acquired position after working perfectly for several hours.
I have never had this happen before, not with other aircraft. This might be specific for the DC-3.

Same issue today, but with the PMDG DC-6. It seems like it gets recalculating the available satellites at some point. (funnily enough it was still navigating fine, but not showing the map anymore)
Popping the breaker did not help, it did not register as a reboot for the GPS.

What helped was switching from GPS to VOR receiver, but that is only available for the DC-6

I wonder is there some builtin "force reboot" functionality/button combo for the asobo/wtt Garmins?

AFAIK, the real world device can be switched off by turning the COM volume completely down. I've seen this simulated in some aircraft (like the WB Cessna 172) but not so in the DC-3
The PMS50 GTN750 has a reset option IIRC but that is a more modern device. It would not surprise me if the real world version GNS530 requires you to pop a circuitbreaker as well if you can't switch it off.

In the DC-3 I can switch off the avionics and turn it on again to restart the GPS's. These will then get a new fix but that takes a while and I sometimes they only find just a few satellites.
I noticed in the DC-3 that after a while the AP switches to ROLL mode. That's fine for a short while but you must correct for drift manually, and it won't follow your flightplan.

I wonder if these problems occur because they are simulating real-world events. A bug in the aircraft addon is unlikely since both are from different developers.