A power outage at a towered airport rendered both ILS components — the localizer and glideslope — unusable for a pilot conducting practice instrument approaches, exposing a cascade of operational complications that illustrate the ground-infrastructure dependencies built into precision approach systems. ILS localizer and glideslope transmitters are powered by airport electrical systems and, while most certificated airports maintain backup generator or UPS equipment to protect critical navaids, a grid-level failure or a generator malfunction can take those signals offline without any NOTAM or prior warning. The pilot's correct identification of signal loss and immediate transition to the published GPS missed approach procedure reflects sound instrument currency practices and underscores the operational value of RNAV-based missed approach overlays, which are increasingly common at airports that retain legacy ILS infrastructure.
The communications picture the pilot encountered is more nuanced than a simple tower closure. A local power outage would take the control tower offline if backup power was insufficient or absent, which is consistent with what the airport operations representative confirmed via apparent handheld radio. However, the inability to raise TRACON at the adjacent Class B airport warrants attention. TRACON facilities are typically remote from individual airports, operate on independent power infrastructure, and maintain robust backup generation precisely because they service multiple airports and airspace users simultaneously. The most probable explanations for the pilot's difficulty contacting TRACON include not yet being in an established communications relationship with that facility — meaning there was no active handoff — attempting contact on an incorrect discrete frequency, or possible terrain and range limitations depending on aircraft altitude at the time. A pilot in this situation should methodically work through guard (121.5 MHz), Flight Service (122.2 MHz), and nearby approach control frequencies before concluding that broader communications infrastructure has failed.
Squawking 7600 was procedurally appropriate once all reasonable communication avenues were exhausted, and airport operations' response on the local tower frequency demonstrates why monitoring that frequency as a last resort retains value even when no controller is physically present. What the scenario illustrates most pointedly for instrument-rated pilots is the importance of maintaining positional and procedural awareness independent of ground-based communications — the pilot's ability to execute the GPS missed approach without further clearance reflects AIM guidance on lost communications, which directs pilots to execute the published missed approach and then operate under IFR lost comms procedures if they cannot establish contact. Had the missed approach been a conventional VOR or NDB procedure, a coincident navaid outage tied to the same power failure could have compounded the difficulty significantly.
For Part 91 and training operators, this event reinforces a broader planning discipline: pre-flight review of NOTAM currency for navaids, awareness of alternate communication assets including Flight Watch and FSS frequencies, and an understanding of which ATC facilities are co-located with airport infrastructure versus housed at remote centers. It also points toward an ongoing trend in the national airspace, where the FAA's continued expansion of RNAV (GPS) approach procedures — including LPV approaches that approximate ILS minimums at thousands of airports — is reducing operational dependence on ground-based transmitter infrastructure. Pilots who maintain GPS approach currency as a matter of routine, rather than treating RNAV procedures as alternates of last resort, carry a meaningful operational margin when legacy ILS infrastructure fails without notice.