Aerocircus | Communication Breakdown

But like much of the emergency procedures pilot training, the two main elements missing from these scenarios are the startle factor and the underlying mental state that there is actually something wrong which may be, in some way, life-threatening (bad) or could at the very least involve a mountain of paperwork (worse).

The first time something unusual happens in flight for real will often let a pilot know whether or not they should really be in charge of an aircraft. In most cases the early training will provide enough basic skills to at least react in a positive and useful manner. This may be tempered by the span of time since that early training and whether or not the pilot has continued to develop or even just maintain the relevant skills and knowledge.

Part 1: It feels like the first time

This article explores two independent yet strangely related occurrences of radio failure in flight. In the first part a young aspiring CPL with less than 200 hours in the logbook recounts his experience and reactions to this event.

The aircraft in question was a 40-something year old Cessna with manual pitch propeller control and retractable undercarriage. The avionics were most likely original.

Imagine

You are the PIC of a fairly typical single engine training aircraft, inbound to a busy metropolitan Class D airport. You make your inbound radio call about 6NM from the airfield. With around 120 knots of ground speed, you have about three minutes before you reach the circuit.

You have made this same radio call from this particular inbound reporting point maybe dozens of times before. So, you don’t need to give it a great deal of thought.

But this time is different – nobody responds your radio calls.

What do you do next? Our aspiring CPL explains his actions and thought processes from this point.

Sounds of silence

“This otherwise normal day had begun around 5 hours earlier with a departure from this same aerodrome for a small rural town some 200NM away. I had no issues with en-route communications and no reason to expect any.

“Approaching the inbound reporting point, I tuned the radio to the ATIS and noted down the relevant information. A few minutes later I made my first inbound call on the local tower frequency.

“Crickets.

“With no response and little other chat on the frequency, I made another inbound call. Once again, dead silence.

“Perhaps there was an issue with that frequency, either at my end or in the tower. I changed to the local ground frequency and tried again, this time with a request for a radio check. Nothing.

“Abnormal thoughts began creeping into my head. “Is the tower closed? No, I just received ATIS information Foxtrot, so that doesn’t make sense.” This eliminated that possibility in my mind.

“I then switched back to Centre frequency and requested a radio check. No response. The inbound reporting point is approximately 4nm from the class D airspace boundary. At 120kts ground speed that gave me about 2 minutes to decide either a) continue inbound at 1,500ft and follow the Communication Failure procedure as per ERSA, or b) turn around, track away from the airfield and work through the problem.

“Realising I no longer had two minutes since that didn’t involve the startle factor or the time already spent trouble shooting the problem, I instinctively chose option B.”

Go back where you came from

“Turning away from the airfield removed the time-critical pressure. This reduced the overall stress since I had made a decision, whether it was the right one or not. Some might argue that traveling away from the airfield was a waste of fuel from a commercial perspective. But being only my second navigation flight after obtaining my PPL, 15 minutes of extra fuel wasn’t even a consideration at the time. In fact, the extra flight time in my logbook was a good thing.

“Traveling away from the field provided options. It relaxed airspace pressures which can be tight with Class C airspace overhead, as well as dense traffic areas and potential terrain hazards. It was here that I noticed the first signs of adrenaline and second guessing.

“I attempted to contact Centre a few more times with no success. I pulled out my cheat sheet of light signals and emergency squawk codes, turned the transponder to standby, entered 7600 and paused. “I hope I wrote 7600 correctly as being the loss of radio and not a hijacking.” Just another second-guessing thought I had.

“I hadn’t even removed my finger from the alt. button on the transponder when I heard, “Station squawking 7600 overhead xxx, Ident if you can hear me.”

“I hit the Ident button and it was confirmed that I had a transmitting problem but could still hear them. “Station overhead xxx, I understand you can hear me, but can’t transmit. Where are you trying to land?” the controller asked.

“Say what now?”

Under pressure

“I had been listening to this area controller for quite some time before this problem arose. I could now hear the duress in his voice. I can’t blame him for asking an unanswerable question. I mean, give the guy a minute to get over the very real startle factor he is now experiencing. Nonetheless, I attempted play along, keying the mic and stating my intentions. After repeating this 3 times without success, it was time for plan B.

“I pulled up the ERSA and briefed the “Communication Failure” procedure for the destination airport. I now had the time to read through it properly rather than fly it from memory. However, I thought I’d try and make contact verbally first before overflying the field at 1,500ft.

Hanging on the telephone

“I rang the tower’s phone number listed in ERSA and was instructed to track for a final on the left runway and to phone back when I was overhead the final reporting point. My first phone call with tower lasted about 2 minutes, and no, I can’t afford an A20 Bose Headset so it was a matter of screaming into my phone and listening as hard as I could, multiple times.

“At the final reporting point, I called back and was cleared to land. I saw a steady green light from the tower, so I radioed back “cleared to land runway left.” Tower heard this transmission and reissued this clearance via radio which I answered. However, I had no idea whether or not they heard my response. I landed successfully and vacated at the next taxiway.

You light up my life

“I attempted radio contact with ground, requesting taxi clearance since tower just heard me, but no answer. I phoned the tower again and received taxi clearance. Thay also advised that they would contact [the] centre on my behalf to relay that I had landed safely.

“Finally, I removed the 7600 code from the transponder to not give the next unsuspecting pilot and controller a fright.

Shut down

“I shut down and secured the aircraft and had a quick debrief with my passenger. Then it was my turn to be debriefed.

“I gave my story to the instructor who had been following me at the inbound reporting point and got told the following, ‘There was nothing wrong with what you did, but I would have just overflown the field at 1,500ft and followed the ERSA from a commercial perspective.’

What would you have done?

Afterthoughts

“Later that night, I started to have thoughts. Was the volume turned down? Did I even push the push-to-talk button?

“The following weekend I was in the area and decided to drop in and have a play with the radio. This time it was without the extra workload of aviating and navigating. Together, my instructor and I attempted to transmit on both radios but to no avail.

“Later that afternoon, I received a phone call. “Maintenance cannot seem to replicate the fault, however since it has happened twice, I asked them to install another push-to-talk switch.”

“The following weekend I took the aircraft for a scenic flight. The radio worked like a charm.

Part 2: Lightning never strikes twice, until it does

After work commitments and adverse weather had grounded us for almost 90 days, it was time for two of the Aero Circus team to get back in the sky and do some circuits to satisfy the 90-day rule. And sharpen the skills.

Lack of currency

With our usual rides out of action for various reasons, we booked an hour for circuits with our friends at one of the well-known flying schools at the airport. The only aircraft available when wanted to fly was a 40-something year old Cessna with manual pitch propeller control and retractable undercarriage. The avionics were most likely original. Sound familiar?

As luck would have it, this aircraft was the same one that our aspiring CPL had experienced a radio failure some 4 months previously. As noted above, in response to the previous failure a second PTT switch had been fitted to the aircraft. This was because the second radio had reportedly not worked either and no other faults had been identified by the technicians at that time.

Around in circles

After an uneventful engine start, taxi call, runups and line-up on the runway, it was time to fly. After receiving and acknowledging our take-off clearance, it was the familiar process: Brakes off, feed in full power, right rudder, engine instruments green, static RPM, airspeed is alive, 61 knots TOSS, rotate and off we go. Nothing to see here.

Start slowing the aircraft on late downwind, drop the gear and run the pre-landing checklist. Turn base, fly the aircraft backwards to ‘normal’ (pitch to control descent rate and power for airspeed).

Acknowledge landing clearance then turn final and check once more: Red, blue, green. All good, and a reasonable landing resulted, despite the extra pressure. In a retractable gear aircraft, it is always comforting not to see a spray of sparks on touchdown.

Flaps up, full power, the usual checks and off again for more of the same.

Then the wheels fell off

However, on the third circuit things started to go wrong. Making the downwind call, I noticed that I could not hear my own voice when transmitting. I tried once more and my co-pilot tried from his side, but we got no response from the tower. By now we were at late downwind, so we quickly squawked 7600 on the transponder and ran the pre-landing checks and continued as for a normal approach (aviate, navigate, communicate).

During this process, inbound calls from two other aircraft briefly tied up the airwaves, highlighting the need to keep ALL transmissions short as you never know what might be going on in other aircraft. Even when you can’t hear other transmissions.

Fortunately, our good friends in the tower were awake and responded with “ABC, copy you squawking radio failure, if you are copying this, runway right clear to land and I will have the light signal for you on final.” I responded by keying the microphone twice, which the tower heard and advised “I received your double click”. I also acknowledged that message with another double click. We could have done this all day, but it was time to focus on the landing.

After landing and clearing the runway, we switched to ground frequency. After a few seconds with nothing from ATC, we called them on the phone and got our taxi clearance.

Backups and lessons

This aircraft is fitted with two radios, but we had turned one off at startup to minimise potential errors in an unfamiliar cockpit. We always carry a hand-held VHF radio in the flight bag, and our mobile phones have the tower phone number in a prominent place in the contacts list. In this case there was no time to explore any of these options while trying to land.

We also used basic crew resource management to work through the problem and share the workload. While one of us focused on flying the aircraft, the other focused on the radio and transponder.

After we returned the aircraft, an instructor at the school we hired from took the aircraft for a short flight and found the radio working perfectly.

At least we managed to get our three take-offs and landings in the logbook.

Analysis

Both these incidents occurred at or on approach to a Metro D aerodrome. In Australia, these are Archerfield, Bankstown, Camden, Jandakot, Moorabbin and Parafield. These all have communications failure procedures listed in ERSA – we will look at these in detail shortly.

But there are also Regional D aerodromes such as Townsville, Sunshine Coast, Coffs Harbour, Tamworth, Albury and many more. These do not have any communications failure procedures listed in ERSA. Nor do the major Class C aerodromes, including the military operated ones of Darwin and Townsville. Then there are Hobart and Hobart Cambridge which seem to be from another universe.

Torture test

To make life just that little bit harder, ERSA is lacking some consistency in this area. While the general flow of the procedures is similar, each Metro D listing for comms failure is slightly different to the rest. For the most part this is necessary due to differing airport layout (runways), but it is also a result of ERSA simply being a concoction of information independently supplied by each airport.

The common emergency procedures in ERSA may also be a little difficult to interpret on the fly. You need to carefully read every line to determine if it applies to your current situation, rather than being able to easily skip sections based on the sub-headings.

For VFR pilots, the procedures imply that you should only squawk 7600 when inside controlled or restricted airspace. No doubt that is because ATC will be mostly/only interested in your location and intentions at that time. However, using 7600 in Class G airspace (especially on approach to controlled airspace) might allow extra time to diagnose issues without the pressure of dealing with a busy airport and circuit at low altitude.

Analysing the official ‘guidance’

Looking through the ERSA procedures once more, it seemed to us that the published procedures are quite vague and have not been well thought out. In our opinion, this is NOT a section of the ERSA that you would want to be reading for the first time and trying to analyse while trying to fly a partly disabled aircraft. For example, the procedure for class G airspace is different to that for classes C and D / IFR which raises a few issues.

In our first case above of a VFR flight approaching a class D airport, you are in class G airspace when you make your initial call at the inbound reporting point. If this is when you discover that your radio is not working, the EMERG procedure says, “Remain in class G airspace and land at the nearest suitable aerodrome.”

To follow this strictly you would not be able to enter class D airspace, so the implication is ‘turn around and go land at the nearest suitable CTAF field’. That may not be the ideal outcome, or even possible.

In our second case above, we were already in the circuit of a class D aerodrome, so the published procedure (which makes some – but not total – sense) is:

1. Squawk 7600.
2. Broadcast intentions prefixed with ‘Transmitting Blind’.
3. Land at the most suitable aerodrome (the one that we are currently doing laps of seems to fit that bill nicely). If appropriate, follow the specific procedures for that airfield if it is class D (e.g., track via VFR approach point, enter CTA at 1,500 feet AGL and proceed to overhead airfield, safely join the circuit and watch for tower lights).

Notice that use of 7600 is not suggested when in class G. So, nobody except you knows that there is a problem.

Possible solutions

For non-professional pilots, is there a simple solution given the wide range of published procedures depending on where you are and how you are flying?

Firstly, we can probably eliminate the need to memorise specific local procedures for all but the class D airfields that we usually fly from or regularly visit.

Secondly, we can filter out the general communication failure procedures in EMERG that do not apply to us, say if we only fly day VFR.

For example, for a day VFR flight, the relevant EMERG in-flight procedures might be (ignoring the obvious guidelines of don’t run into anything and remain in VMC):

1. Rock the wings (might only be useful if you are already in the vicinity of a tower or other aircraft that can see you)
2. In class G airspace broadcast intentions with ‘Transmitting Blind’, land.

It might be safer to land at a towered airfield where the controller can ‘watch your back’ rather than relying on other pilots at a CTAF field to figure out what is going on while dealing with their own problems.

 Our suggestions

The actual procedure you use will depend on the extent of the radio failure, i.e., can only transmit, can only receive, can’t transmit or receive, total avionics or electrical system failure (no transponder).

To keep it simple, perhaps a good standard procedure in all VFR cases could be as follows.

1. Squawk 7600 and continue to transmit intentions prefixed with ‘Transmitting blind’ (except for total avionics failure).
2. Use your mobile phone or portable VHF radio to contact ATC, be that for the towered airfield you are landing at or the Centre frequency if CTAF.

In the absence of a verbal clearance from ATC, or at non-towered airfields, use standard CTAF procedures to join the circuit via midfield crosswind and visually maintain separation. In class D look out for the green or red tower lights.

Be prepared

Something we have done since we started flying is to keep the home airfield tower phone number in our mobile phone contact list. This is usually with a 0 or 1 in front of the name so that it always appears at the very top of the contacts list.

We also make a note of any relevant phone numbers for other airports that we may be visiting or passing on our flight plan. This is much easier than trying to find this information when under pressure.