Transponder problems with ATC COMS - Video

I was passenger on a $100 hamburger run.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBl3rbiwpTA

Note, pilot is fresh on getting her VFR ticket and wanted to get some
ground ops experience so she asked me to come along. She also thought
it would be cool to capture her comms with ATC so I brought the
recorder along. Little did we know how much "communicating" was in
her future!

Transponder acted silly on departure and video includes both ATC and
in cockpit communications.

Note, pilot is part owner of the C172 and I was totally clueless on
the operation of her transponder. She just knew how to push the button
to the squawk code. Durn thing is so automated it automatically goes
to mode C on take off. My transponder is nothing as techie as what
was installed in her plane.

While she was flying the plane in the troubleshooting stage, I had
pushed the standby button and saw no display indication that would
show the transponder NOT sending the Mode C data. It still displayed
the FL data. I would have expected that to disappear when I set it to
standby or some indication that Mode C was shut off.

Rather then troubleshoot in an area that was congested with ATC
traffic and cause more chaos with an incorrectly reporting
transponder, we figured to recycle to see if it would clear it up.
Since it didn't clear it up, we canceled the flight following and
turned off the transponder since we had cleared KJAN airspace.

Reason for shutting it off was I was afraid we would be seen as
"unverified traffic" by center at 700 foot higher then what we really
were. Whether these decisions were "procedurally correct" or not I
don't know, but the safe outcome of the flight shows the success of
the flight.

I had asked the pilot what would she have done had she been by
herself, and she said she would have returned back to Madison which in
my eyes is as equally a good decision as mine to cancel flight
following.

I felt the pilot was incredibly composed considering the extra tasks
tossed back at her.

Certain things training sure never covers, and this would be one of
them....

For those interested http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru6p-5dP5D0 was
when I was her second passenger just three months ago. As you can
see, she has come a long way on handling an airplane.