OK, my "I learned about flying from that' experience.. (hope your sitting comfortably)....
Went for a trip in a plank with my mate who got his PPL(A). The aircraft he'd booked wasn't yet back from the previous hirer, so we were offered another - after a telling "they've just repaired that right, so it should be fine" comment from the CFI.... BELLS should have been ringing in my head by now.
The same CFI took us out to the aircraft and said to my mate, we've had the electrics fixed on this, but should they 'trip', just cycle this button here and everything should be fine. We fired it up, and the CFI checked everything before we left. Everything looked ok so far.
Plan was to do a round trip down the coast to Cheshire and back (about 80nm round trip).
As we got close to the turning point, the electrics died. We recycled them using the switch - no problem.
No problem the second time it happened five minutes later. Or 5 minutes after that or two minutes after that...
You get the idea. By the time we were nearly overhead, the switch was going up and down like a fiddlers elbow..
We tried turning off pieces of equipment one at a time in an attempt to reduce the load on the electrics and see if we could at least get enough juice for the radio or transponder (7600 was dialled in ready, but the electrics didn't fire long enough for it to be seen), it was like a scene from Apollo 13.
Suffice to say, we found ourselves just on the edge of Class D airspace, with no radio, no transponder and all the electrically driven dials dead....
I ended up ringing the airfield below us on a mobile (cellphone) and my mate making a 'precautionary' landing.
We could have flown back if it had just been the radio that had gone, but given the instruments were dropping like flies we didn't know if the engine was going to be next.
Cost us £80 back home in a taxi, and the school owners gave us a bollocking for not bringing the plane back!!
Things I learned:-
if you not happy with the aircraft - dont take it. Its up to you to say its in a flight-worthy condition. I think my mate hesitated because he didn't want to dissappoint me. Rather be dissappointed than in that situation again....
Always handy to have two pilots up front rather than one. Even though I know more about knitting than flying planks, being able to navigate and work a radio (when they work) halved the workload on each of us ... wouldn't have like to have tried to think straight if it was just me!! I always offer my plank mates a ride now, just in case I need help.
Later we found out there was a dodgy earth connection on the battery causing the problems. The reason the problem seemed to be getting worse as we approached the field we decided later was that the ADF was still tuned in to the NDB at the destination field from an earlier flight, and as we got closer, the ADF started to draw more and more current which is what kept tripping the electrics.
p.s. apparently a few months later the same aircraft dropped one of its flaps onto the runway on final....
p.s. Aviation Accident Investigation Branch reports (NTSB equivalent) can be found here -
AAIB