Flight lesson: You’re flying, not driving

I was assigned to a 152 that had only one radio and VOR navigation. I had yet to acquire an iPad or other supplemental navigation, but none of that really mattered because my route worked well with pilotage, dead reckoning, and a VOR. My plan was to depart my home airport, Stinson—a towered airport south of San Antonio—and head west to Uvalde, a nontowered airport with a fantastic diner. After getting lunch, I’d then go southeast to Cotulla, another nontowered airport with a friendly unicom, before heading home.

I took my time preflighting. The radio had been squawked. Maintenance had reviewed the problem and said everything was resolved. Still, I made sure to conduct a radio check on the ground before I contacted the tower for a clearance to taxi. I got clearances from the tower to taxi and take off no problem.

Everything was going well until I reached cruising altitude and the radio was eerily silent. Checklist time. The radio was dialed in to the appropriate frequency, the volume was up, my headset was fully plugged in, my headset volume was up, no fuses had popped. I asked for a radio check and was met with silence. I kept situational awareness and got to my first checkpoint. Once I made the turn to follow the road to my next checkpoint, I started thinking of what else I could do. I knew the loss of communication procedure to squawk 7600 and wait to be acknowledged, but my home airport was very busy when I left. If I was going to stop my cross-country, it would be easier and safer to land at a nontowered airport.

I unplugged my headset and plugged it back in. Nothing. I tried the co-pilot jack. Still nothing. I tried turning the radio off and back on again. I retuned the approach frequency and still wasn’t hearing anything. I realized then that I was almost at my first stop. I decided to descend and see if I could get the weather at Uvalde. After the descent, the radio worked!

I did a radio check with some of the airplanes in Uvalde’s traffic pattern. They could hear me. I landed the airplane safely and immediately pulled out my cellphone to call my instructor. Approach had called my flight school when I went radio silent. My instructor texted me after Approach called her. The chief flight instructor, who was also flying at the time, had tried to reach out to me on the radio. I never thought to use my cellphone. I’ve gotten into the habit of ignoring my phone completely while driving, so I never even thought of it as a resource while flying.

Someone at Cotulla looked at my radio for me and said the internal battery for the radio needed to be replaced. On my return trip to Stinson, I realized that my radio only cut out when I was above 3,000 feet msl. If I had tried descending earlier, I might have figured it out sooner.

I safely finished my long cross-country solo, but I learned a few lessons along the way. My biggest takeaways were to better manage the resources I had and to invest in a handheld radio for backup.