Narrative:

I was at cruise on my flight; and I had just canceled IFR and picked up VFR flight following from center; so I climbed from 8;000 feet MSL to 8;500 feet MSL and I lost all electrical power to the aircraft. My navigation instruments; radios; and ads-B transponder all went blank. I assessed the situation and decided to take the conservative route and performed a descent into the nearest divert airfield. I got one radio transmission off to approach on an external handheld radio that was received by approach and [requested priority handling] and notified them that I was descending down and was proceeding to full stop landing. [The airport] is a small non-towered airfield. I did not violate any FAA far's in the divert process intentionally or unintentionally. As soon as I landed (uneventfully); I received a cell phone call from approach asking if I was the pilot who diverted; I responded with yes and everything was okay and to please cancel my previously emergency and to close out my VFR flight following flight plan; and the approach controller confirmed the emergency was canceled and VFR flight plan was closed. There was no aircraft damage.I found out during then exterior inspection after landing that my alternator belt had broke; which caused the alternator to quit and battery to run dead. My recommendation and lesson learned from this event is I highly recommend the use of external GPS enabled devices such as ipads with aviation applications such as foreflight and wingx Pro7 because they give you an extraordinary amount of situational awareness in a very convenient package; even when your internal aircraft equipment fails.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: C182 pilot reported a complete electrical power loss and successful divert landing.

Narrative: I was at cruise on my flight; and I had just canceled IFR and picked up VFR flight following from Center; so I climbed from 8;000 feet MSL to 8;500 feet MSL and I lost all electrical power to the aircraft. My navigation instruments; radios; and ADS-B transponder all went blank. I assessed the situation and decided to take the conservative route and performed a descent into the nearest divert airfield. I got one radio transmission off to Approach on an external handheld radio that was received by Approach and [requested priority handling] and notified them that I was descending down and was proceeding to full stop landing. [The airport] is a small non-towered airfield. I did not violate any FAA FAR's in the divert process intentionally or unintentionally. As soon as I landed (uneventfully); I received a cell phone call from Approach asking if I was the pilot who diverted; I responded with yes and everything was okay and to please cancel my previously emergency and to close out my VFR flight following flight plan; and the Approach controller confirmed the emergency was canceled and VFR flight plan was closed. There was no aircraft damage.I found out during then exterior inspection after landing that my alternator belt had broke; which caused the alternator to quit and battery to run dead. My recommendation and lesson learned from this event is I highly recommend the use of external GPS enabled devices such as iPads with aviation applications such as ForeFlight and WingX Pro7 because they give you an extraordinary amount of situational awareness in a very convenient package; even when your internal aircraft equipment fails.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.