All right. Flight medical passed

So my flight medical is history. Passed it with flying colors. Now I just need to wait for a special FAA exemption known as a Statement of Demonstrated Ability (SODA). Hopefully that won't take too long.
As I've said before, if Sir Douglas Bader could fly fighters with two missing legs, there's no way that I can't fly a Cessna with one.

I'll keep ya updated, and hopefully will be posting flying pictures again shortly.


And since flying is the topic today, I couldn't help but reflect on a flight that I made a few years back that definitely put me to the test. It was the time that I took a good friend of mine up for what should have been a routine night flight on a nice summer night. Mike had never been in a small airplane before and I offered to take him with me when I went up for one of my periodic after dark flights intended to keep my skills up.

We took off from the small airport that my FBO was based at, and flew around a while taking in the lights below before heading over to one of the larger commercial airports in the state to do a few full-stop landings. All gauges were in the green when I pre-flighted the rental Cessna 172 and everything was working fine up until I put the first landing in on the airport’s main runway and turned off onto the taxiway for the next departure. I noticed at that time that the electrical gauge in the aircraft was fluctuating instead of showing a steady positive reading. When I contacted the tower to get take-off clearance for the next go-around, I noticed that the radio kept cutting in and out. I made a mental note to let the rental folks know about this and when I got cleared for take-off, I turned onto the main runway, ran the engine up, let the brakes go, and began my take-off roll. We shot down the centerline until reaching take-off speed, and just a few seconds after I rotated back and the wheels left the concrete, everything went dark as all interior and exterior lights on the aircraft went out. Uh-oh…

I couldn’t see the instrument panel any more but fortunately the engine itself never missed a beat. The prop was still turning at least. But I was too far down the field to try to put it back down even if I could have read the airspeed indicator and other gauges. I tried to radio the tower to declare an in-flight emergency and get priority landing clearance but the radio was as dead as the lights. Mike just sat there looking out the window. He didn’t realize how much trouble we were in, lights and radios out over a major commercial airport. But I knew. I knew that with the lights gone, we were in serious danger of collision with any of a number of other aircraft in the area. We were invisible to the other traffic in the dark sky but we still had mass and velocity, and without any ability to talk to the tower, I realized that going back around the pattern and trying to shoe-horn in between the other aircraft--mostly large commercial airliners and cargo planes--for a quick landing just wasn’t an option. So I made the decision to clear the area quickly and at an altitude below the traffic pattern. I’d figure out what to do next once I’d gotten out of the way of everyone else.

First I got my red-lensed Mini-mag flashlight out of my flight bag. (That little light just paid for itself a thousand times over.) Turning it on and handing it to Mike, I told him to keep it focused on the instrument panel. At least now I could see the gauges and I knew how fast we were going and how high we were. Life got a little better after that. I also noticed that the electrical gauge was now flat on the left peg. Great.

The radios were still out, and so was the transponder. I had to assume that even if the airport could make out the aircraft itself on radar, they’d have no idea of our actual altitude. And of course I couldn’t radio them for help or let them know what was going on. I also realized that without the radio, I wouldn’t be able to turn on the pilot-controlled field lights at my home field, and without those lights, landing there wouldn’t be possible. Without a working radio, we were literally trapped in the night sky.

I pulled off my headset and tried to use my cell phone to call Pete, the owner of the plane and manager of the FBO. I had his home number in the phone but unfortunately the aircraft engine was so loud that I couldn’t hear anything over the phone. I couldn’t even tell if he’d picked up. All I could do was shout “Pete! If you can hear this, I’ve got a total electrical failure in the 172 and big problems approaching the field. The radios are out and I need the lights on…Also you need to call [the large airport’s] tower and let them know what’s going on. I yelled this a few times at the phone but couldn’t tell if he was actually on the other end. (I found out later that he was not. The very hard-to-hear message was left on his answering machine.)

Then finally luck gave us a break. As we came in sight of the home field, the field lights were ON! Our first piece of luck. Maybe,

The lights at this airport, like most small airports that don’t have 24/7 staff at them, are turned on by radio clicks from a pilot on a certain frequency. Once on, they stay on for a pre-set time, presumably enough to let that pilot take off or land, and then they go back off. I didn’t know how long these lights were set to stay on, nor did I know when they’d been turned on. As far as I knew, they could go off any second. And there could also be another aircraft in the pattern, setting up for a landing blissfully unaware of the blacked-out C-172 skating in on the deck. I knew that I had to get on the ground quick before those lights went off, but I also knew that I didn’t have the time to set up for a normal pattern approach and I scanned the sky looking for the lights of another plane on a downwind or base approach. I didn’t see anything and I hoped and prayed that there wasn’t one there that I was missing. I didn’t see anyone on the field either, not coming or going. Whoever’d turned the field lights on seemed to be long gone…unless they were above and behind us in my blind spot.

I executed a quick and--very low--180-degree clearing turn to check that area, and when I was reasonably sure that we weren’t seconds away from a collision, I dove for the field on a straight-in approach, telling Mike to keep the light moving between the altimeter and airspeed indicator. I smacked the flap control lever to lower the flaps and slow us down and realized that they were also electrically-controlled when nothing happened. Fantastic. As if it wasn't already hairy enough, now we had to come in hot for a no-flaps landing with no landing lights on the plane on a field that could itself go dark at any second.

“Come on, God, “I said aloud, "get us down safe and I swear I’ll be in church Sunday morning.” I wasn’t above making deals when the pressure was on.

Like a big gray bat, we crossed the field threshold faster than I liked and sank down towards the runway, my hand on the throttle ready to slap full power on and climb out if the lights chose that moment to go off. But they didn’t go off, and as I pulled the nose up to stall us onto the ground, we settled into a near-perfect no-bounce landing and I chopped the power. We were down safe.

Quickly I turned us off of the active run-way and began taxiing towards the FBO. We didn’t get half way there before the field lights went out, plunging the entire airport into darkness save for the big white and green beacon. We’d made it in and down with less than sixty seconds to spare. Fortunately there was just enough ambient light to enable me to differentiate between the asphalt taxiway and the grass adjoining it so I could taxi back instead of having to shut it down and figure some way to tow it back. We got the plane back to the FBO and secured it. I called Pete again and got his voice mail, leaving another message to let him know that we were at least down safe. Then I called the main airport tower and explained to them what had happened. They were a little concerned when they saw the aircraft lights go off and couldn’t raise me on the radio, but they’d figured we’d had an electrical problem and watched us clear the area on radar.

The next day I talked to the field Airframe and Powerplant mechanic who worked on the rental fleet there. I told him what had happened and suggested that he check out the electrical system thoroughly. His reply: “Oh yeah. We’ve been having trouble with that one lately. I thought I’d fixed it.”

Obviously not. Thanks for nothing.