With Covid-19 shutting much of life down, I spent much of March and April also trying to work out how I was going to manage to renew my flight medical, set to expire at the end of May. So there were doctor visits, lab work and a cardiac stress test to try to figure out. Luckily, reasonable heads at the FAA stepped in and announced a non-enforcement policy/extension time to renew medicals (as well as some variability for certain other training deadlines). As I got all of those administrative ducks lined up for myself, I also wanted to ensure that I was on top of my instrument flying game, as I’d have to plan a visit out to Bolingbrook, IL to see Dr. Bruce, my Senior Aviation Medical Examiner (and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be flying out there commercially).
So at the beginning of May, I headed out to the airport to do a morning of instrument practice with Milton. Unfortnately, in just the couple of weeks the plane had been inactive, birds had struck again, this time putting a nest (sans eggs luckily), this time in the tail cone of the airplane (where the rudder and elevator meet, so a lot of connecting wires there, not to mention the electrical wires for the red tail beacon and the white aft position light). I had to actually unscrew ALL of the numerous screws and remove the tailcone to get access to all the grass debris lodged in there. Sigh.
Milton and I knocked out a good number of approaches that morning, mostly out at Chester, CT, where you can perform a see-saw—come in from the south on the GPS 35 approach, make a low approach (pass) of the runway, and the missed approach takes you straight out and sets you up nicely for the GPS 17 approach from the north. When you make the low approach and go missed from the GPS 17 approach, you end up perfectly set up for doing the GPS 35 approach all over again. While it may seem a little boring, it is a timesaver and we varied it up a bit to keep it interesting. On some approaches we would hand-fly the airplane and on some approaches were did a coupled approach, where the autopilot, linked to the GPS, is flying the approach. With the autopilot I have installed, Gwaihir will actually also fly the glide slope (descent) on an actual approach, so all I have to do is monitor the approach, manage the power, landing gear and flaps. In a real-life/real world conditions, I would likely fly a coupled approach whenever possible.
Following that flight, Gwaihir went in for its annual inspection, where they again opened up all the inspection ports, took out all the seating and thoroughly checked the airplane over, fixing any little items (and luckily we didn’t have any major items this year!). The plane came out of annual on the 11th and I did a shakeout flight on the 12th without any issues.
Given the wear and tear on the alternator belt and the cracked spinner plate, both of which can be signs that something is slightly out of balance on the propeller as it spins, I had asked the mechanics about getting a dynamic balancing done on the propeller. The specialist was able to come out on the 13th and do that, getting the “wobble” from 0.345 down to 0.001, which is nearly perfect. Here’s a good article from AOPA on what the process looks like and why it’s important:
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2018/january/22/propeller-maintenance-balancing
On the 14th, Michiko and I planned a flight out to Block Island for a socially distanced walk around town and just to get out for a little while after being cooped up at home so long. In fact, this was Michiko’s first flight with me this year! After doing a careful pre-flight, I flipped the master switch and got the click of a dead battery. Figuring maybe the annual inspection and the dynamic balancing had just worn the battery a bit, I was able to get a jump start from the line crew. (There’s a little access door on the left hand side of the engine cowling, well behind the propeller, for an external power cable). The plane fired up immediately with no issues, so I carefully ran through my pre-flight and pre-takeoff checklists, paying special attention to the electrical items, including the alternator to ensure the battery was showing that it was charging.
The wind was out of the east, so we taxied all the way around to Runway 11 and were cleared for takeoff. I lined up on the runway, pushed the power in and we were quickly rolling down the runway. At rotation speed, I eased back on the yoke a little and the plane leapt into the air.
And as soon as the landing gear left the ground, the entire electrical circuit in the plane died! The GPS, engine monitor and multi-function display screens went black, the radios and the transponder clicked off. It was a complete electrical system failure.
The first and only rule of an emergency is fly the airplane. I knew that the airplane could continue to fly without electrical power. The engine powers the alternator which fires the spark plugs and the fuel system doesn’t require a fuel pump to feed the engine. Essentially, the airplane didn’t care at all that the electrical system was down. So I continued climbing straight out along the runway heading and when I reached about 700’, I made a crosswind turn to the right to come back to land on Runway 11–figuring that the control tower guys would catch on that I was now staying in the traffic pattern rather than heading straight out as planned.
I continued the climb to 1,000’ (pattern altitude at Bridgeport) and Michiko, who had figured out that something wasn’t right (and also because she couldn’t talk to me on the intercom), saw that the panels were all dark. I reached behind me to my flight bag and grabbed the handheld radio I carry as a backup (because of course I do!), plugged in my headset to it and called the tower to tell them I’d had a complete electrical failure and was returning to land. Calm as always, they immediately cleared me to land, but then also immediately offered me the option to land on Runway 6 if I wanted to (winds were light)(and it would save me time from having to circle all the way back around to Runway 11), so I took that option and made a normal landing on Runway 6, using the handheld to get the okay to taxi back to Three Wing.
Overall, if you’re going to have an in flight emergency, that’s exacly the kind to have—the non-event kind. I flew a mostly normal pattern, made a normal landing and tucked the airplane safely back in its parking spot. I never broke a sweat and Michiko, though she knew something was wrong, never felt like there was something to be scared about and we had a laugh about it later.
I immediately let the maintenance folks know so that they could take a look the next day, Monday. On Tuesday, the maintenance folks sent me a photo of the culprit. The main battery connector, a 40-year-old original item, was fried. That morning, I also had a friendly call from the FAA Flight Standards District Office (FSDO), asking about the incident. Because of the nature of my immediate return to the airport, they had been notified by the control tower folks as a matter of course. The FSDO guy then had a quick call with the maintenance head at Three Wing and everyone was happy.
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