Clearance limit: an airport.
 

This may have been discussed before, but I will ask away:

If one is given an airport as a clearance limit, and not told to "expect" a further clearance, what happens in case of a comm failure. Do you proceed direct to the IAF of an approach? I had this where the airport had no navaid within 10 miles of the field. And it got me thinking after the fact, since I was IMC.

Possibly a difficult one to answer, as there may be different answers under National Procedures?

My understanding is that, in my part of the world, if you suffer a Comms failure and are able to do so, you may continue iaw your clearance, but should squawk 7600. If you are unable to continue... for whatever reason, you should squawk Emergency (7700).

I guess that if you are IMC inbound to an airfield without approach aids, and suffer a comms failure you should take the latter option; and perhaps consider diverting to a better equipped alternate?... the 7700 squawk should alert all concerned of your presence.

Trouble is, no list of emergency procedures can cover every possible eventuality... sometimes, when things get too tricky you have to just make it up?

I believe that the correct procedure is to squawk 7700 for about a minute and then set your transponder to 7600. This gets the controllers attention and then lets us know that you have a radio problem. Oh please do not squawk 7700 constantly if you have lost your radios.

Radio failures are handled differently from an emergency (7700) so if your only problem is that your radio quit then 7600 is the correct code to squawk.

Mike
NATCA BNA

Hi
The procedure that you have to follow for radio failure in IMC is quite long and complicated. http://www.ais.org.uk/aes/pubs/aip/pdf/enr/2010103.PDF is where you will find it in all its glory. Basically though if there is no nav aid in use at the airfield like in your case you are supposed to arrange descent to be at the minimum published level at the apprpriate designated Initial Approach Fix. But as I said the procedure is long and complicated depending on where you suffer failure.