The flight from my eastern Texas home to Grand Rapids, Mich., had been mostly uneventful. Right up until ATC repeated a vector clearance I had read back and was complying with. I tried again, slowly. No response. Clicking the push-to-talk switch on the borrowed Piper Saratoga’s yoke failed to generate a click I could hear in the audio circuit. Just to be sure, another press of the switch failed to illuminate the comm radio’s transmitting indicator.
I reached for the handheld mic mounted below the power quadrant, put it to my mouth and pressed the transmit button. Still nothing.
I couldn’t transmit.
By now, the controller was growing less angry and more concerned. I reset the ship’s transponder to 7600 and waited.
“Saratoga 12345, if you hear me, ident.” I immediately mashed the transponder’s ident button and was greeted with, “Saratoga 12345, ident observed. Return to your previous squawk code. Fly heading 030, vectors to join the Runway 35 localizer.”
I was on an IFR flight plan but the weather at Grand Rapids was good VFR, and I was pretty sure where the airport was, but the vector helped.
Everything else seemed to be working, so I slewed the heading bug to 030 and engaged the autopilot’s heading mode. The Saratoga gently banked right and took up the correct heading.
While the autopilot flew the airplane, I yanked the headset jacks out of the pilot-side jacks and plugged them in again. No improvement. Straightening back up in my seat and reviewing the situation, I saw I was about to join the localizer, so I twisted the heading bug to 350 and watched as the airplane banked around to the left. Out the windscreen, I was greeted with a great, clear view of my destination airport.
“Saratoga 12345, I see you joining the Runway 35 localizer, cleared to land Runway 35. No need to acknowledge.”
Once I touched down, the controller advised me to switch to ground control, which I did. Ground had me stop where I was and hold position for a Boeing taxing east across my taxiway for a departure on the intersecting runway. Shortly, I was cleared to the ramp.
And that’s pretty much all there was to it. Once I secured the airplane, I found a phone number for the tower cab and called to thank them for their help and ask if they needed anything from me. “You’re good to go,” the controller said.
I guess I did everything right. I had gotten into the habit of writing down major clearance changes, like new squawk codes and the like. That made things simpler, easier and quicker.
All in all, my first airborne radio failure was a non-event. A couple of days later, a local shop had found a loose wire and repaired it. I was good to go. Again.
