On the 25th May 2019 I gave Chipmunk G-AOFE an airing out of a very busy Goodwood Airfield. Met a few good friends there as they were visiting the fly in that was taking place today on that very nice sunny day.
Then the owner and I flew up to Lockfield, a private strip just south of Wisborough Green in Sussex. The owner Joe did this leg of the flight and we made a couple of approaches and a complete stop landing. After a few minutes walking around the field enjoying the peace of this little strip, we took off again to return to Goodwood. About two or three minutes into the flight the radio and intercom went completely dead. After a minute or two trying to fathom if it was a fault or finger trouble, we realised the radio was not going to recover, so I decided to return to the strip to give a little more in depth check on the ground.
Also trying to arrive as a non radio aircraft at Goodwood on a busy day like that day without warning them ahead of time would be problematic. So back to Lockfield and after inspecting the circuit breaker which popped every time the ground to flight switch was turned on, we could not find anything obvious. I phoned Goodwood to inform them of our communication problem, they accepted our request to return non radio and we departed Lockfield again. I very much enjoyed that trip back with just the sound of the engine in my ears and no noisy headset jabbering away and disturbing the tranquility of flight, just tha engine and the sound of the air flowing past my canopy, nothing can beat that on such a fine sunny day.
Sometimes when things go wrong it can turn out to be a positive rather than a negative. Happy Landings.
Onlyvfr 