Radio issue after Take-off clearance - how to react

Unsure of what was happening I eventually decided to start my take-off roll.

I’m not quite sure if you mean that you know there was a problem with your radio or not, before you took off. But you had some doubts as to what was going on.

Personally, I wouldn’t have taken off with any doubts, and I definately wouldn’t have taken off with a broken radio. Why take a problem into the air when you’re safely on the ground? If after taking some time to think about the broken radio, disussing it with ATC at departure and arrival and agreeing some proceedure, I then decided to depart, that would be different, but not when I just found out about it.

I would have asked ATC if they could read me, and if I got no answer, I’d squawked 7600, and taxiied to the next exit and exited the runway.Worst case scenario, I’d lose my place in the queue. But at least I’d not find myself in the air with a broken radio, and trying to plan a diversion outside controlled airspace.

Reading your account, I get the impression (perhaps wrongly) that you felt an urgency to get into the air after being cleared to takeoff. It is of course not a good idea to sit a long time on an active runway, but I wouldn’t ever let someone at the other end of a radio (intentionally or unintentionally) pressurise me into taking off, especially with a newly discovered problem. I’m sure ATC would prefer you didn’t take off in such circumstances anyway, so any pressure was self imposed.

Well done for asking the question and seeking to learn from it!

I 100% agree with dublinpilot and was about to write pretty much exactly the same thing.

Before reading this thread, I would have probably proceeded the same way as JFW did; now, I would do as Dublin Pilot suggests – both are probably legal procedures, but the latter is a clerly better airmanship; by the way, if you have a wrong PTT switch and you choose to push that on the co-pilot’s side, you also need to take his headset (at least on GMA340/GNS430 wired in a Centurion; don’t ask me how I know)

If there is doubt, there is no doubt. If there was doubt, you should have held position and clarified. Although NORDO may not be a big deal depending on the airfield, it could also turn out quite tense.

However, if you got a takeoff clearance, and read it back, you would assume that the controller had heard your readback and you would have no reason not to take off.

Huh? I don’t think I’ve ever had a the readback of a take-off clearance acknowledged anywhere.

That’s odd. I haven’t kept a count but it must be around 2 out of 3 times that I get a “readback correct” from tower after my readback.
Or a correction to my readback of course ;)

That is what I would expect after reading back a departure clearance – not a takeoff clearance.

If you read back a takeoff clearance in error, you should get “hold position” or something like that.

aart wrote:

That’s odd. I haven’t kept a count but it must be around 2 out of 3 times that I get a “readback correct” from tower after my readback.
Or a correction to my readback of course ;)

I don’t think I’ve ever got that — even abroad. That must be a local practise.

In the UK it is fairly common to get “readback correct” but IME only after reading back an IFR departure clearance.

The wider issue is that at many places a wrong readback will be ignored anyway. Outside the countries where English is widely spoken, one hears this all the time on the radio. In say Spain, you can forget readbacks and most of the time ATC won’t notice / won’t care.

Hmm, the day before yesterday got a ‘readback correct’ in Reus (Spain), VFR departure. Maybe a matter of Reus being a relatively large airport with mostly IFR and training flights.