Seems like each flight lately has been one of firsts. Today brought two firsts: First unsupervised solo, and first radio failure!

Actually, radio failure overstates things a little. Here's the scoop:

I reached the airport at 4:40. Paid for gas to top it off, and went through a routine preflight on 49785. Had some trouble with the radio, though. I could never get it so that I could hear myself speak through my headset. I ran a radio check ("Easterwood Ground, Cessna 49785 radio check 1..2..3" and listened for a reply, which came promptly, "Cessna 785, Easterwood Ground read you.") So I thought I could manage the inconvenience of not hearing myself, as long as Tower could hear me. By now it's almost 5:20.

And away I went to 16 & Bravo to runup. The next indicator that something was amiss was when I announced "Ready to takeoff" to the tower. I didn't hear any response so I announced it again. The tower came back with "Can you hear me 785?" which told me I had missed something. "Say again" says I. "Can you hear me?" says tower. "Affirmative." "Clear for take-off on 16." "Clear for takeoff on 16, 785."

And off we go. Thinking back, I should have planned a contingency in case the radio went out (or aborted the flight...duh!), but we've jiggled it in the past to get it to work, and I thought I'd do that again. Midfield downwind, however, it became clear that jiggling wasn't working, nor was swapping to the copilot jacks, and I was missing transmissions from the tower. Not all of them, fortunately, but enough that I was worried. Of course, I should have flipped on the speaker, but hindsight is 20-20.

I did manage to echo their clearance to land on the second transmission, and announced the landing to a full stop. ATC stacked two planes (1 Lear and 1 turboprop, I believe) behind me and directed each of them to do a 360 to slow them up behind a "slow Cessna on final". Kinda embarrassing, but at the time I was too involved in landing to take offense.

I started at a nice leisurely 65 KIAS (carb heat out, 1700 RPM, flaps at 20) approach from about a mile and 1000', then heard ATC's description of events and decided to nose down, throttle up and power in. Reached about 85 KIAS ("watch out with those flaps"), nosed up as I approached the numbers to drop airspeed, and floated down to a not-too-bad-under-the-circumstances landing (touched, then floated about a foot or two, then greased in). Taxied to RW 10, back to Alpha and back to tie-down. Exhaled. Heard ATC clear the planes behind me as I was leaving the active. I squawked the radio back at the clubhouse, and hope it gets taken care of soon. Flying's not as much fun when your communications are buggy (<---understatement).

Andy said later he had heard the whole thing and said that ATC was being difficult, but I was just grateful for their patience.Since we talked for a few moments about what happened, and since all his information came from monitoring the radio while he was teaching in 15Mike, and since he didn't say anything about my communications, I'll conclude that I sounded halfway capable up there.

So I got that going for me.

0.3 hours as PIC. I like the way that looks in the logbook.