Electrical Power Loss
First post so I'll introduce...about 160 hours, IFR discountinuance on the flight portion due to bad weather last Monday so flight portion is rescheduled for Dec 4.
I started flying in 92, stopped till recently when work wanted me to travel around state and said they would pay for IFR training.
Now for the topic of the post. While waiting on my new check ride date I thought I'd go out tonight and get some more night time and my 10 TO/landings.
I flew to another airport in calm winds and did an ILS practice approach in VMC.
I left the missed hold and headed towards a controlled field for my landings when the trouble started.
The aircraft is a 1980 C172RG. (It's important to note it is an retractable gear plane)
I had just gotten ATIS and I called up the tower but there was no response. The plane is equipped with a Garmin 430 GPS and I was using the Com radio built into the GPS. About 30 seconds earlier, the screen got brighter and the avionics lights got dimmer.
So I used the old Nav/Com radio that came in the plane to see if it was working and the tower said it was really scratchy. Subsequent tries on the GPS didn't work and now tower didn't respond on Com 2 either so I quickly squawked 7600.
By this time I had lost all electrical power so I quickly reported in the blind that I had no electrical and was returning to my home airport which was also controlled and was equally in distance from my location.
First post so I'll introduce...about 160 hours, IFR discountinuance on the flight portion due to bad weather last Monday so flight portion is rescheduled for Dec 4.
I started flying in 92, stopped till recently when work wanted me to travel around state and said they would pay for IFR training.
Now for the topic of the post. While waiting on my new check ride date I thought I'd go out tonight and get some more night time and my 10 TO/landings.
I flew to another airport in calm winds and did an ILS practice approach in VMC.
I left the missed hold and headed towards a controlled field for my landings when the trouble started.
The aircraft is a 1980 C172RG. (It's important to note it is an retractable gear plane)
I had just gotten ATIS and I called up the tower but there was no response. The plane is equipped with a Garmin 430 GPS and I was using the Com radio built into the GPS. About 30 seconds earlier, the screen got brighter and the avionics lights got dimmer.
So I used the old Nav/Com radio that came in the plane to see if it was working and the tower said it was really scratchy. Subsequent tries on the GPS didn't work and now tower didn't respond on Com 2 either so I quickly squawked 7600.
By this time I had lost all electrical power so I quickly reported in the blind that I had no electrical and was returning to my home airport which was also controlled and was equally in distance from my location.
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