Had my first experience with light guns! I flew “uneventfully” this morning, knocking out 2 ILS approaches at KJAN and a visual back to KMBO with my first friend in my plane.
Met my second friend (Dale) we hoof off to KMEI in his rented plane. Good lunch, I sprung for the free hot dogs, ice cream, popcorn and drinks. We get in the plane, call ground, everything is cool and got our taxi clearance to runway 4 via bravo! After runup, we call into tower, silence. We call into ground, silence. We try com 1 silence. We dial in ATIS and we hear ATIS! HUH, WTF? Call ground again, silence, then getting “desperate” call approach silence. We turn around and tower is flashing white at us. Hmmm, white is not green and it’s not red.
I ask Dale (PIC) do you have the light gun signal guide??? Uh no…
I do, but it’s in my portfolio that I take in my plane on every flight but since I was passenger I only took my flight bag!
Ok… I say, is it ok I talk on the radio? He says no problem (his experience with ATC was much less then mine and he had that deer in headlight look). I say Meridian tower N12345, we see what I think are white lights, looking for green. They immediately start flashing green. COOL huge difference in color and not my perceived “wishing it was green”, we can get out, so I say Tower, N12345 (fake tail to protect the innocent) taxiing to runway 4 for immediate departure. We look back, no additional signals so we take off.
I found in my flight guide the signal cheat sheet. We messed up! I told Dale he needs to file a NASA report as we should have waited for a solid green signal. Flashing green means taxi to the runway. Solid green means cleared for take off. First for me in the real world of aviating, and really interesting experience! BTW flashing white means return to starting point at the airport (FBO in our case)
The question that comes up in my head, was should we have squawked 7600 when we were really not sure if we had a radio problem or if it was user induced problem while on the ground? When should we have squawked 7600 **if at all **since we did not want flight following back to KMBO.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to see the light from the tower as I had never seen it other then in a book in training or a tower visit. Next Friday, my friend and I plan to do some light gun work at our local airports so we can see what it looks like from the air, and of course, I plan to roll the video camera. I know local training doesn’t cover this in the actual flight training and it makes me wonder has anybody else seen light signals from the tower while approaching the airport from the air?
Keep 'em thoughts coming. I about beat my head on the desk when I saw John’s posting. I should have known his thoughts from my instrument training.