I have squawked 7600 during a genuine comms failure in CAS. I wasn’t shot down. 
I left CAS by the shortest route possible and continued to my destination NORDO. I got light signals from the Tower at the destination – they could see me on radar and knew I had lost comms because I was squawking appropriately. On landing I was met by a Follow-Me van. Worked out well.
Finners wrote:
I have squawked 7600 during a genuine comms failure in CAS. I wasn’t shot down.
I guess that it is a rare occurrence that an IFR equipped aircraft with a COM failure is still able to sqawk… I have never flown IFR in anything that has only one radio and so it is either a total electrical failure – in which case you can’t squawk 7600 either (been there, done it) – or there is always one radio left.
BTW: I belong to the dying breed of pilots who still write down every new frequency. Just in case I press the wrong button on the radio management unit and everything is gone – it would be too embarassing to ask for the right frequency on 121.5MHz (where all the Ryanair crews are discussing the lunch they are about to have…).
I write down all frequencies too, on a piece of paper which needs no batteries (!), but as often as not the issue is with ATC giving out a wrong digit. In such a case one usually has enough time to call the previous unit – unless one used the time to take a pee or do an MH370.
But this thread is mostly about VFR, not the highly structured world of IFR. I recall flying in France when on a weekend whole swathes of their FIS were asleep; I think they fixed that a long time ago but there are so many places in Europe where ATC ELP is hanging on by a thread. Most of the time it works (as others keep repeating) but sometimes you get a hair tearing out moment.
Plus a lot of ATC don’t support VFR traffic all that well. Many units regard it as a nuisance and completely capriciously give you a hard time when it comes to CAS transits. I recall crossing the Swiss Alps at FL129 and heard recently that this no-Class-C-VFR is still practiced there.
And of course the most basic issue is that you never actually know if you will get a clearance, and ATC is under no obligation to give it to you or even say why not, whereas under Eurocontrol IFR you have an implicit whole-route clearance, so if e.g. they lose your flight plan while you are airborne you can just sit there eating strawberries or whatever and you know they will sort it out, due to the magic letters I-F-R.
I have been as far as Crete VFR, which is as far as I have been IFR…
I also know many pilots don’t post disasters in forums. They just send them on email
Something that hasn’t been mentioned yet is the nasty topic of VRPs – e.g. here
Peter wrote:
…. and you know they will sort it out, due to the magic letters I-F-R.
At least in central Europe. Elsewhere maybe not (I’m told, no own experiences – “Callsign XYZ, this is Ljeningrad radar, your permission number is invjalid. Leave Russian airspace immjeadiately and call Minsk radar on 123.45” has happened to more than one of my colleagues). But then, you wouldn’t fly there VFR.
Peter wrote:
…nasty topic of VRPs
Those are easily dealt with by entering the coordinates into any GPS device within reach. Before GPS it was a lot more difficult.
what_next wrote:
BTW: I belong to the dying breed of pilots who still write down every new frequency. Just in case I press the wrong button on the radio management unit and everything is gone – it would be too embarassing to ask for the right frequency on 121.5MHz (where all the Ryanair crews are discussing the lunch they are about to have…).
I have once accidentally tuned away from London Control thinking I was tuning COM1 when I was tuning my active COM2. Only after entering both frequencies did I realise what I had done and obv did not have the old frequency. Went to 121.5. I also was not shot down. I have seen numerous arliners lose contact over the mainland UK – some for 5 or more minutes.
Sure the 3rd World is a completely different thing. For a start, FP distribution is purely AFTN message-based, so you get all the potential “VFR FP missing” issues with IFR FPs.
My comment about getting shot down is tongue in cheek, as I keep saying over and over. It came dead seriously from a NATS official at a PPL/IR visit the Swanwick and the guy had the balls the repeat it verbatim when I asked him to clarify it. I guess all one can take home from that pompous “presentation” is that they take a 7600 in IFR-CAS very seriously and you are very sure to get intercepted if you fly a long stretch with 7600.
OCAS, I am sure nobody will give a damn. Radio is not mandatory in Class G anyway in the UK, even for IFR
Those are easily dealt with by entering the coordinates into any GPS device within reach.
Nowadays the modern handhelds have VRPs in the database. Something to check if you by something on Ebay, etc… Doing this by hand would be an awful job (been there, done it for Spain, Italy, France and beyond, and that was just for the one planned route).
what_next wrote:
I guess that it is a rare occurrence that an IFR equipped aircraft with a COM failure is still able to sqawk… I have never flown IFR in anything that has only one radio and so it is either a total electrical failure – in which case you can’t squawk 7600 either (been there, done it) – or there is always one radio left.
In my case both COM radios were working fine; it was a stuck transmit button that caused the problem.
I have both fail; one was a corroded aerial, the other a failed box. They didn’t fail at the same moment, but in the same flight.
I fixed it by swapping the boxes over, but without the Allen Key I would have been a 7600er, on airways.
Timothy wrote:
I fixed it by swapping the boxes overHow did you determine that would help? Or did you just guess it would?
