![]() I had two radios in that plane, I can't remember if I had thought about trying #2 or not. Tower seemed pretty happy to have me answer back, so it was all good. I tried to troubleshoot a few things and then had that "uhh, yeah, that's it" moment and turned up the volume. I was starting to think I'd have to make a decision pretty soon because I was getting closer to that D-space. I did my normal radio call from about 10 out and didn't get a response, I called again when I was a little closer and didn't hear anything, and I tried again. It turns out the day was so bumpy that when I had switched to the tower freq I had inadvertently bumped the volume knob down very low. I had gone to an untowered airport for some pattern work and on the way back I couldn't contact tower. I can't remember if this was before or after my checkride, but I do remember I was alone in the plane. The only time I thought I'd need the light gun for real was when I was solo on a very rough day. CFI and tower were talking so they could verify clearances just in case, but I had to go strictly by the light signals because I couldn't hear their conversation. In that case, I was told to remove my headset so I couldn't hear the radio traffic. LOLĪfter that experience, I started giving my pre-solo students a light gun demonstration before they soloed.Ĭlick to expand.One of my CFIs, it was probably on a flight review, had me do at last one landing with light signals. When that student showed up for his next lesson, he was very anxious for me to test him so he could show off his newly-acquired light signal knowledge. Our taxi route required crossing a runway so, as we approached, I had the student angle toward the tower, just in case something had changed, and we saw another 'cleared to taxi' signal. On final, we received the light signal for 'cleared to land'.Īfter clearing the runway, we turned toward the tower (behind us) to get our 'cleared to taxi' light signal. We picked out the right-base traffic and adjusted to follow him as he followed the aircraft that had been in front of us on downwind. I walked the student through figuring out a best guess at our sequence from what we knew of the traffic in the area. Since radios are 100% reliable, light gun signals had, of course, been deemed unimportant.īefore the radio failed, I had heard an inbound aircraft call who had been given instructions to enter a right-base. The student was a business owner who had a habit of learning the information that he thought important and ignore information that he deemed unimportant. We were flying closed traffic patterns and the radio failed about the time we turned downwind but before we had been given our sequence for the next landing. Sometimes white strobe lights accompany the threshold lights. These same lights when viewed from the opposite direction will be red, indicating the end of the runway. ![]() The airport hosted a university flight program as well as three additional, busy, flight schools. To mark the beginning of a runway, green lights are placed at the threshold. It was a very busy pattern with a lot of training aircraft-probably eight to ten aircraft on frequency. In the late 1980s, I had a radio failure in the pattern in a C-152 while teaching a primary student.
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