I was flying the CAT-8 from Santa Barbara to Burbank in a 172 the other night. Most of the flight was uneventful, if a little stressful due to heavy traffic.
On approach to Burbank I kept waiting for the handoff to tower. I dialed in the tower frequency on com 2 to be ready, but bumped com 1 in the process and quickly changed it back. I kept thinking, "I know they sometimes hold me on approach longer than I expect, but this is getting ridiculous!" Finally, as Burbank was disappearing from my rear window I made the call, "Socal Approach, Cessna 5842 request frequency change to Burbank Tower."
Silence.
Call again.
Silence.
I think, "Maybe I didn't tune com 1 back to approach correctly." Took a look at the sectional, and saw 120.4 listed. I was pretty sure I had been on 120.55, but switched over to 120.4 to give it a shot. Made the call, no response. Thinking, "Ok, this is weird, but I am confident what the frequency is for Burbank Tower." Switched to tower, "Socal Approach, Cessna 5842 on approach, lost comms with approach controller."
Silence.
Finally realized I had some sort of radio failure. Simultaneously, the mountains NW of the airport were coming up fast. It was tempting to diagnose the failure, but I ignored that for the moment and made a left turn to avoid becoming a CFIT statistic. My next realization was, "I'm in class C airspace and don't have two way communication!" The fastest way out of the airspace was to climb, so I added power and got up to 5500 at Vy.
I finally took a breath and relaxed a bit. Started looking for options to get into a smaller airport. Then I saw it. My Ammeter sitting at -60. I had never turned my alternator on.
Turned the alternator on and got back on the radio. After a bit of flustered confusion where I accidentally called tower instead of approach first, I got instructions back to Burbank and landed without further incident. I had no idea whether that would be a pass or fail on the CAT-8. Turned out it was a pass!
The whole thing was all kinds of stressful, but so full of lessons learned:
1. Fly the plane! It could have been so much worse if I had gone head down to troubleshoot.
2. Always follow the checklist.
- 2a. Always check the checklist against the POH. The checklist I was using didn't have a check for the alternator!
3. Clearly my engine scan was seriously deficient. I could have easily caught the mistake earlier. I've fully integrated an engine scan into my traffic scan since.
4. I should have changed my squawk to 7600. It wouldn't have made a difference here since I had no power, but I didn't know that at the time.
5. Always write down frequencies assigned by ATC! One bump of the wrong dial can leave you out of coms and the written record is the only sure way to get back.
6. Feel free to add more suggestions!