This past Saturday I was flying the family from San Jose with a planned destination of Wenatchee, WA. We stopped first in Livermore to refuel (No way I'm paying San Jose fuel prices) and then headed off Northbound. Added to the circumstances was that my 18 year old son needed to be in Wenatchee by Sunday morning for a hockey tryout with the Wenatchee Wild.
Just past Travis AFB, my overvoltage relay tripped taking the alternator offline. Per the POH, I cycled the master in an attempt to reset the relay. Initially that appeared to work, but a few minutes later it happened again, and cycling the master did not fix the problem. The POH suggests trying to cycle the alternator breaker (Either main or field) if cycling the master didn't work, but when I pulled the main breaker a fairly significant puff of smoke came out of the breaker. Needless to say, I left it pulled. No additional smoke or evidence of electrical fire was present with the master either on or off.
So at this point, all of my electrical equipment- radios, transponder, lights, GPS, etc. - was running on battery, and the battery was fairly rapidly depleting. The low voltage warning was on immediately. I let NORCAL know what was going on and cancelled IFR so I wouldn't have to be talking to them. Turned off the master to save battery and then spent a few minutes reviewing options. If I landed in the vicinity, there would be no way to get my son to Wenatchee, and the plane would probably be stuck in an inconvenient location far from home. No more smoke or other indications of any electrical fire, and the plane was flying fine, so I made the decision to go back to San Jose and catch an Alaska Airlines flight out that evening to Wenatchee.
I turned on the master again to let NORCAL know the plan. San Jose is within the San Francisco Class B mode C veil, and I was a bit concerned about that. I let NORCAL know that I wanted to go back to SJC without a transponder, and they cleared me for that. They asked if I wanted to declare an emergency, but I didn't see the need at that time. I informed them that I was going back to SJC and that I would be without radios or transponder until reaching the Embassy Suites, VPEMB, landmark just at the edge of the KSJC Class C at which point I would turn the radios back on to talk to SJC. They cleared me for that plan, and I turned the master back off to save battery juice.
Weather was CAVU, and navigating was easy with Mt. Diablo as a clear landmark in the distance.
Just before reaching VPEMB, I used the emergency gear extension procedure to drop the gear because that procedure doesn't require electrical power like the normal procedure does. Turned on the master to confirm 3 green lights and called up San Jose to let them know the situation. They cleared me to land on 30R, I lowered the flaps to half (electrical drain) and switched off.
As we were on final, my wife pointed out that San Jose had rolled the fire trucks which were waiting next to the runway with their flashers on. Clearly, San Jose had declared an emergency for me. No problems with the landing, and I powered up the radios once clear of the runway for taxi instructions. Got the "How many souls on board?" question then.
I was even followed to my hangar by an airport ops guy who congrstulated me on a nice landing and wanted to get a few more details of what happened. That was it. He confirmed that the tower had declared on my behalf.
So, that's the situation. We were never in any danger, the plane was flying fine, and the only real issue was coming into the mode C veil without a transponder and landing at a Class C without communications. I didn't see the need to declare since NORCAL and San Jose were aware of the situation and cleared me for it. What I'm interested in is the opinion of others here. Would you have declared an emergency in the same situation? If so, why? Would you have done anything differently? Landed at the nearest airport instead of flying 30 min back to San Jose, perhaps?
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