It was a beautiful sunny, but very cold January 26, 1993, at the Burlington (Vermont) International Airport. I stopped at the FBO to request a preheat and have the tanks of the Cessna 150 topped off. Our club airplane was a mid-1960s vintage machine with its own set of quirks that required constant monitoring. One of these was the com radio. It would work reliably for weeks on end and then, for no apparent reason, it would catch the proverbial electronic flu. The usual complaint from controllers was that transmissions were very weak.
My plan was to fly northwest over Lake Champlain to a designated practice area for some basic flight maneuvers. With the preheat complete, I climbed aboard, got the cabin organized, and began the start-up procedure. The first two start attempts produced nothing but a very sluggish movement of the prop and no hint that the engine was about to come to life. I knew that the frigid battery had limited power but elected to give it one more try after another shot of prime. The prop began to move in the same lethargic manner and nearly stopped altogether before the engine suddenly fired up. I breathed a sigh of relief and figured that my troubles were over. In fact, they were just about to start.
The usual quick chat with the tower produced a clearance for takeoff and I was on my way. The first hint that something was amiss occurred just after the tower handed me off to the departure controller. Although I was still only a couple of miles from the airport, radio communications were extremely weak. I could barely hear the controller and wondered if I had actually heard all of his instructions. At this point I was headed toward the practice area and figured that if departure wasn't happy with my course, the controller would call again. Knowing the history of the radio, I concluded that it must be having a bad day, so I continued.
The second hint that things were not as they should be was the relative quietness of the departure frequency, which I was required to monitor. How nice, I thought. After about 30 minutes, I called approach to get cleared back into the Class C airspace for the trip back. No answer. I called again. No answer.
Knowing that I could not get any closer to the Burlington tower without entering the Class C airspace, I headed for the Franklin County State Airport in Highgate, Vermont, which was only 10 minutes away. If the radio was working at all, I ought to be able to tell by calling Franklin's Unicom while directly overhead. If it turned out that the radio had died, I could land, telephone the Burlington tower from there, and make the necessary arrangements to get the airplane back in. I was beginning to feel confident that I was handling the situation well.
My next scan of the panel showed both fuel gauges indicating empty. Panic set in. My heart began to pound. I looked around for a suitable place to land if the engine should decide to quit. The frozen surface of Lake Champlain looked more inviting than it had ever looked before. I made a decision to try to make Franklin County, which was just inland from the lakeshore, knowing that I had the lake below me if I needed it.
As I approached the field, a call to unicom again produced no reply. Not knowing how much fuel I had left, I elected to make a straight-in landing to the north, and land downwind. Wanting to slow the airplane as much as possible, I pushed down on the flap switch. Nothing. It was at this point, only moments before touching down, that I realized the exact nature of the problem at hand — I had a total electrical failure.
Following an uneventful landing, the mechanic at Franklin County pointed out that I probably had plenty of fuel on board because I had taken off with full tanks and had been flying only a little more than an hour. Had I remembered that the fuel gauges are electrically operated, I could have saved myself an enormous amount of worry, not to mention embarrassment.
A quick test of the battery showed that it was about as dead as it could be. The alternator had failed and was not charging it during my flight. Simply starting the engine had depleted nearly all the battery's energy. We removed it from the airplane and charged it while I attempted to regain my composure. Before heading home, I called Burlington Tower on the telephone to advise them of my situation. They, as well as the mechanic who helped me, suggested that I not use any electrical equipment until I had to radio them from outside the Class C boundary. Before I hung up, they also gave me a squawk code for the transponder.
The 30-minute trip home was uneventful. The radio worked when it had to. I even had flaps for landing. I must have rerun the day's events a hundred times in my mind that night, trying to figure out where my judgment had failed me. Well, it wasn't too hard to come up with the answers. As a new pilot, there were many obvious clues that I hadmissed, such as failing to notice that the ammeter was not showing a charge. Fortunately for me, the price was small — a little time and a few holes in my pride.
Tyler Yandow is a 250-hour private pilot and architect living in Manchester Center, Vermont. He currently flies a Cessna 172.
"Never Again" is presented to enhance safety by providing a forum for pilots to learn from the experiences of others. Manuscripts should be typewritten, double-spaced, and sent to: Editor, AOPA Pilot, 421 Aviation Way, Frederick, Maryland 21701.
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