Pilot Life: A Bad Day...

There's not much to say about today other than the fact it was a bad day for me! I tried to go flying solo in the Piper Cherokee to practice some landings, but I never got in the air. In fact, the only thing I did today was taxiing the airplane before I encountered a rather serious mishap.

The Cherokee that's grown on me has let me down today...

After doing the pre-flight, engine-start, and run-ups, I taxied the plane over to the far end of the runway. As I was getting ready for takeoff going through the checklists, I heard a loud pop through my headsets followed by an audible screech that got progressively louder. I thought something happened to the plane's electronics before noticing that my radios went out. The next thing I noticed was a slightly foul odor; I immediately came to the conclusion that I may have had an electrical fire! I was passing an intersection taxiway when this happened so I turned the airplane over to it in order to keep the main taxiway clear. Once I came to a complete stop, I wasted no time in shutting down the engine because I had no idea what the extent of the situation. Once the engine was shut down, I hopped out of the aircraft; I also noticed some electrical smoke emitting from the radio controls on the panel, verifying my suspicions.

With caution, I evaluated the aircraft and called up the mechanic, who drove out to meet me at the airplane. He decided to hop in and taxied it over to the maintenance hangar and I followed him in his pick-up truck. He thinks the radios might be fried because they're old and probably at the end of their service life. He asked me to taxi the plane back over to the ramp as it was taken offline for maintenance for indefinite amount of time. So I taxied the Cherokee back to where I pulled it out from and concluded a very disappointing flight (or lack thereof!). Like I said, today was a bad day for me!

But after a moment of reflecting, I'm glad this episode occurred on the ground and not in the air. And I must be a good enough pilot to know what to do and be able to handle myself the way I did when this problem occurred. The downside is that the Piper Cherokee I love to fly is down for a while. But I live to fly another day!