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| If the plane has a fancy GPS, be sure to understand it! |
A few weeks ago, on November 10th, I experienced my first radio failure during my 3rd solo. I was at 36 hours of dual-instruction in the plane, and only 1 hour of solo experience.
It was a beautiful morning. Twenty something miles of visibility with an overcast layer way up at 20,000 ft. It allowed one of those rare no-sunglasses flights at 11am.
My instructor stepped out at the terminal, and wished me well on my final supervised solo. Before shutting the door, he reminded me how to use the fancy GPS to tune COM1 frequencies as I didn't often fly this particular plane. Sparing too many details, I had to start the plane twice because of a concern with the nose gear strut. After the second start, the GPS was on some weird screen and I couldn't get it back to the radio screen. I elected to use COM2 only, rather than go through another cycle of shutting the plane down to call the instructor over. It was just going to be a few touch and goes on the tower frequency.
I got my taxi clearance and headed down to runway 27R, where I was practically alone. I was more at ease that the tower frequencies wouldn't split and the radio would really be a complete non-issue.
I was given my takeoff clearance and told to follow a Cessna taking off of 27L for left traffic. (My flight school requires a student's inital takeoff on the longer 27R, even for 27L patterns.) I screamed down the runway and was shortly in the air. It was pretty quiet and I was just keeping an eye on the other plane, waiting for it to turn crosswind when my headset erupted in complete static at about 200ft AGL.
It was extremely loud, and I could hear faint hauntings of pilots and controllers talking - but couldn't make out the words. I went into action mode.
- Volume? no Squelch? No
- Keep the cessna in sight
- Retry headset. No improvement
- Cessna.. check.
- 7600, transmit just in case.
- Turn downwind and level off. I should stay slow.
- Steady green light from the tower. Cool!
Then I just flew the rest of the pattern and landed. I considered a short approach, but decided not to do that without radios - and there was someone holding short.
I didn't get to do my touch-and-goes but it was a pretty cool experience. I finally got to see those light gun signals and use that ground school knowledge. It was the first time as PIC that I really had to make a few important decisions quickly. I feel a little bad for stressing the controller, but everyone is safe.
