Suddenly the pattern was too peaceful
"Cessna Seven-Zero-Four-Romeo-Yankee, taxi to Runway 33."
That's how it started. Wind 340 at five miles per hour. Not a cloud in the sky. Unseasonably warm. Sixty-two degrees on February 2. A perfect day to stretch my student wings a bit. The plan was to do a warm-up touch and go and then a few stop and goes to practice short-field techniques before exiting the pattern to work on stalls and steep turns.
The last radio transmission I heard was my clearance for the option on the downwind. I executed a normal landing and rolled on through to a normal takeoff. I concentrated on making a crisp pattern and being consistent.
All of the books, ground schools, and instructors teach student pilots to always think about what to do if...before takeoff, on climbout, in the practice area, in the pattern, anytime. Talking to other pilots and instructors in our flying association, I have never heard any of them tell any first-hand hair-raising stories and statistically, the chances of anything really happening are pretty slim, so a real emergency was pretty much the last thing on my mind.
Entering my second downwind I applied the carb heat and did my prelanding checks. Then I realized I hadn't received the usual clearance from the tower for the option. Calling the controller yielded no response. The nature of the situation didn't immediately register. I called again, and it hit me that there was only the sound of my own voice in my headphones. No static. No traffic. I was alone and aware of the growing panic that was struggling to replace my ability to pilot the airplane. But before it took hold, the calm, reasonable voice of my absent instructor got my attention.
"Aviate, navigate, communicate."
First, I made sure the airplane was totally under control and stabilized. Then I tried to remember all of the things to check in the event of an apparent radio failure, a process left wanting by nerves and inexperience. I tried another transmission--nothing. Switching to the ground frequency was no improvement. I scanned the switches, but nothing obvious stood out. I cycled the nav/comm button--dead air. About this time, I pulled my headset cords from the intercom and plugged them into the receptacles for the right side yoke and tried that push-to-talk switch. Still awfully quiet.
Now I had to make a decision. It was time to turn base. I anxiously sifted my slender accumulation of knowledge and experience to recall if I could legally continue my approach without a clearance. Did I have to exit the pattern and do anything like circle outside the pattern boundary until I got a light gun signal? I didn't know.
I decided to stay in the pattern. There had been one other airplane behind me, and no one was on a straight-in final. I reduced power, bled off some airspeed, and let in 10 degrees of flaps, trimming for 70 miles per hour as I made my turn to the base leg. I put in 10 more degrees of flaps and the airplane slowed to 65 as I turned onto final, extended by spending too much time on downwind. My eyes searched the tower, looking for the light gun signal, hoping for something green. I wasn't absolutely sure of the difference between blinking green and green, but I knew green was OK considering the situation, and I didn't have time to look them up now.
Thankfully, a green light winked at me from the tower. I stabilized my glide and picked my landing spot. Looking back to the tower I saw a steady green light. Suddenly everything started slowing down again, and it became a routine touchdown. Crisis over. I knew how to land as well as the next guy. I rolled clear of the runway at the first exit and stopped clear of the hold-short lines. My composure somewhat restored, I did my normal post-landing checks. Soon feelings of doubt began to erode my short-lived confidence. Had I panicked? Had I overreacted? Had I done the right thing? I fiddled with the radio and tried to make a call. No change.
The green light winked, "Taxi to parking."
Halfway there I noticed the nav/comm switch was set to the VOR channels. I cycled it and tried the radio once more. Still nothing. With the airplane tied down, I described the event to one of the instructors who was out on the ramp.
"Come with me," he said. "I know exactly what the problem is."
The first thing he checked was the comm/off/speaker switch. Sure enough, it was set to Off. Did I feel like an idiot. He switched it to Speaker and with the speaker now blaring radio traffic, he grabbed the handheld mic.
"Beefa unicom, radio check." He paused and peered at the radio as if he realized it might not be working. He switched to another frequency and called, "Proflight unicom, how do you read?" There was no response.
"I guess you're right. At least you know it's receiving, but I'd still write it up."
I didn't feel so bad now as I went in to write the squawk.
The head of maintenance walked me back out to the airplane armed with our headsets and a brand-new handheld mic. He checked all of the switches and then the headset mics and muffs. They were fine, but we still were not transmitting. He explained that on the older airplanes the socket for the hand-held mic is often a good place to look for transmission trouble. Under the panel he discovered a loose wire to the handheld cable socket. Jiggling it got it working intermittently, but it kept cutting out. We went back inside satisfied it really was inoperative, and I wrote the squawk.
As I kept haranguing myself about how I had responded to the situation, my instructor's voice came back to me again. She reassured me, reminding me I was a student pilot with barely five hours of solo time and precious little experience with which to face down an in-flight problem. I had done everything I was supposed to do. I had recognized the problem, tried to troubleshoot it, and--most important--maintained control of the airplane and the situation to get down safely.
The last thing I did was call the tower and thank the controller for recognizing my predicament and working to get me down safely.
What I've taken away from this experience is the realization that in all of these practice emergency scenarios, my instructor was sitting next to me in the airplane. Her not being there caught me by surprise. No amount of training can simulate your instructor's not being in the airplane to tell you what to do. I know now how important it is to run mental drills of emergency situations when I am alone.
By Kevin Cuba
"Learning Experiences" is presented to enhance safety by providing a forum for students and pilots to learn from the experiences of others. It is intended to provoke thought and discussion, acknowledging that actions taken by the authors were not necessarily the best choices under the circumstances. We encourage you to discuss any questions you have about a particular scenario with your flight instructor.
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