Complete electrical failure

[NineThreeKilo]

#6 should be #1.

Yep

Also if you're VMC, the first thing out of that handheld would be to go 1200.

Might I suggest having your pax dig through your bags while YOU fly the plane
BTW, why was your chart in a big flight bag, not on your knee or in the side pocket

 

[NineThreeKilo]

Ohh, if you have a zulu headset and Bluetooth phone you can call approach/FSS through your headset, had to do that once, good tool to have in your backpocket

 

[Jim_R]

Yep

Also if you're VMC, the first thing out of that handheld would be to go 1200.

Not sure what you mean. If you mean call ATC and cancel IFR, I certainly would have done so if ATC could hear me, but they couldn't. Tried a couple of "any station receiving, please respond" calls, too, hoping someone could relay for me, but got no response from those either. Thus, I was forced to remain IFR. (If you literally meant squawk 1200 on the transponder, I don't think that's a legitimate way to terminate an IFR flight plan. Not sure how ATC would have reacted if I'd done that, but at the very least I bet I would have had a few more questions to answer with ATC after I was back on the ground.)

Might I suggest having your pax dig through your bags while YOU fly the plane BTW, why was your chart in a big flight bag, not on your knee or in the side pocket

Well, yes, I obviously considered asking my pax for help, but what I realized was that she was not familiar enough with my materials for me to tell her what to get me. The other obvious thing was to ask her to hold the bag on her lap to make it easier for me to search for the stuff I needed. A bigger problem that day was that she was already not feeling well, and so she was more concentrated on the sick sack in her hand than on exactly what I was doing.

As for why my charts were in my bag: You caught me--laziness. It's so rare that I need a paper chart any more that it's easy to just say, "Aw, they're right there two feet away in the bag, I can grab them on the off chance I need them. Why mess with pulling them out and putting them away every flight?" Well, now I know why.

 

[Jim_R]

Ohh, if you have a zulu headset and Bluetooth phone you can call approach/FSS through your headset, had to do that once, good tool to have in your backpocket

I have a BluLink Bluetooth adapter. It works well on the ground. In the air, coverage is spotty, especially in rural areas and at higher altitudes. That is not at all a reliable link for me. (At least, it hasn't been in the past. I just got a new phone with 4G/LTE capability and have not yet flown with it to see if coverage is any different. At any rate, I still had the old phone at the time of my lost comms event, so that would likely not have helped matters.)

 

[gismo]

The new engine monitors can be set to notify the pilot if the voltage falls below 12v or what ever you set it at. At the first hint of problems you can start shutting down high electrical loads.

In a 14v airplane you should set the low voltage alarm threshold on your engine monitor (or anything else that provides that function) to something between what it reads without the engine running (typically 12-12.5) and what it reads with the engine running and the alternator carrying the load (typically 13.8-14.2). If the monitor voltages are in those typical ranges, a good threshold is 13 volts. Setting the threshold to 12 volts will often mean you get an alarm when the battery is just about exhausted. To be able to manage the alternator loss (e.g. resetting the shedding loads, finding a place to land VFR, etc) it really helps to get an alert very shortly after the alternator isn't doing it's job.