Tim Flight

This photo was taken on the approach into Portland, Maine (KPWM). Those of you from the area should recognize the Old Port outside the window.

Yesterday the Beech Aero Club hosted a fly-in at Barnes in Westfield, Mass.

I performed my pre-flight on the plane and started up as usual. I noted that the anmeter was actually reading around zero… and perhaps a sliver on the negative side as it vibrated where it should have been on the positive side. I had not flown that particular plane in quite awhile, so I took note that it was odd to see the amneter reading zero. I made a mental note to myself to keep watching it.

As I performed the run-up check I noticed that the condition had not changed. I turned off the landing light and the rotating beacon and the amneter started to look a little better. I proceeded with caution, taking off. Everything appeared okay during climb-out. As I turned out of the traffic pattern I pressed the PTT button to announce my position. Nothing. Hmmm… okay. I turned the landing light off, nav lights off, and rotating beacon off. I pressed the PTT button again…. nothing.

Many pilots with a lot more hours logged than me describe flying as hours of boredom interrupted by minutes of shear terror; was this my minute? The instrument panel went dark. Everything that relied on electrical power went blank. Communication radios, navigational radios, lights, etc were all gone.

Now to put this into perspective for anyone who doesn’t fly… an electrical failure during the day isn’t a big deal. All instruments that are powered by gyros still work. Airspeed indicator, altimeter, turn coordinator… all of those things still function normally. Think about what would happen if you were driving in your car at night and all of the lights in your dashboard went out. You could still get home, right? It wouldn’t be a huge safety issue although you wouldn’t want to drive that way for too long.

I was in much the same position. I could have flown for hours like that without trouble… but you don’t necessarily want to. I was only about three miles from the airport so I turned around and landed without incident. Parked the plane, got another one, and flew to Barnes for a great fly-in. Kudos to my instructor for training me well and recognizing that a day-time electrical failure isn’t a big deal. I guess I’ll have to save my two minutes of terror for another flight.

Tim Flight
Alternator failures in an airplane won’t stop me!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 22nd, 2005 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Aviation. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.