1st in-flight failure

jetjock07

jetjock07

New Member
So, I'm a relatively young fresh pilot. I have about 75 hours and received my PPL last August. My experience so far has been really good and I'm very meticulous about my flying and being prepared.

Yesterday, I was flying with another pilot other than my instructor for the first time. I found a buddy who is looking to split time with me and we went up and practiced some touch and goes and steep turns and he really wanted some right seat experience. Everything went smooth and fine until we came back to the airport to polish everything off with a couple touch and goes. Get up to crosswind and my buddy is in control and tried to make a radio call and couldn't make one. He asked me to make the call for him.

What do you know, I get a response back saying that I'm on the "guard frequency." I looked over, the GPS is out, COM1 is out, COM2 is flickering on/off fast and guess what, our flaps barely worked. So, no radios, and the only thing I could hope was nobody else was in the pattern with us. We landed smoothly, but this sure got my adrenaline running. I'm just glad we were in the traffic pattern at my small home airport. :insane:
 
msmspilot said:
Eh. Sounds like an alternator failure. My first alternator failure got my adrenaline going too. Of course, it was in IMC in a single...
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I had an alternator turn off... not fail... in a 172RG. Needless to say the power pack did not operate and the gear did not extend. But a simple reset and everything was hunky dory.
 
same thing happen to me the other day, in an all glass airplane. . . turns out was the alternator going out. Good times. . (we jsut got out of the coulds). fly long enough and radios tend not to work, alternators do go out (usualy at night). The thing is, fly the airplane and things turn out OK. Dont be a cirrus pilot and Pull the chut!
 
Congrats on keeping your head :) Now you know how you will react when something happens out of the ordinary and it will help prepare you for WHEN something else happens. Good job :)
 
Douglas said:
What kind of avionics set up do you have that defaults to transmitting on guard?
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Garmin systems can be configured to do that in the event of a power loss. I believe the G1000 is setup to automatically switch to guard following a number of different failures.

To the OP, We all rember our first in flight failure even if it was a vac pump in severe clear. The most important thing is to make sure you take something positive away from the experience.
 
If I lost the radios, flaps and gear all at the same time I imagine my heart rate would be slightly above "resting" too!
 
GlenA said:
Congrats on keeping your head :) Now you know how you will react when something happens out of the ordinary and it will help prepare you for WHEN something else happens. Good job :)
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:yeahthat: Sounds like you did a great job handling things. Congrats.
 
The G1000 has an analog backup for the comm that automatically go to 121.5 when the digital comms quit working. I'm not sure about the 530 or 430.
 
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