Narrative:

Daytime in VMC while attempting a full stop landing the control tower issued go around instructions with the comment; 'your gear is not fully extended.' I immediately executed a go around including raising the gear lever which was in the down position. As I followed tower's instruction to extend my upwind departure leg; I noticed that the landing gear relay circuit breaker had tripped. I reset the circuit breaker and attempted to lower the gear again. I received no indication that the gear was activating. I heard the tower call my right crosswind turn just before the display of navigation/communication 1 went totally black. As I turned to enter right downwind and began to manually extend the landing gear. The manual gear extension was consuming more time than the length of a normal downwind leg would have provided me. The southbound heading of the right-hand pattern would result in penetrating class B airspace if extended to the south. I elected to declare an emergency on communication 2; which appeared to still be working and announced my intention to depart the traffic pattern to the east in order to complete the task of manually lowering the landing gear. I learned later in a telephone conversation with the tower that my radio transmission was never heard. I turned to an easterly heading and continued to crank the gear down while visually monitoring for other traffic. After completing the manual gear extension; I reentered the right downwind leg of the right traffic pattern. I performed a low fly by past the tower and because of the lost communications received a steady green light gun signal confirming gear being down. After completing a normal right hand pattern; I received a steady green light gun signal from the tower and proceeded to land. All phases of the landing; touchdown; rollout; and taxi to parking were normal and uneventful.after parking; to my chagrin and utter embarrassment; I realized that the alternator switches were in the off position. The full electrical power load had been on the battery alone and no input from the alternator.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: BE-55 pilot reported having difficulties with his landing gear and radios that were later traced to his failure to turn the alternator switches on.

Narrative: Daytime in VMC while attempting a full stop landing the Control Tower issued go around instructions with the comment; 'your gear is not fully extended.' I immediately executed a go around including raising the gear lever which was in the down position. As I followed Tower's instruction to extend my upwind departure leg; I noticed that the landing gear relay circuit breaker had tripped. I reset the circuit breaker and attempted to lower the gear again. I received no indication that the gear was activating. I heard the Tower call my right crosswind turn just before the display of NAV/COM 1 went totally black. As I turned to enter right downwind and began to manually extend the landing gear. The manual gear extension was consuming more time than the length of a normal downwind leg would have provided me. The southbound heading of the right-hand pattern would result in penetrating class B airspace if extended to the south. I elected to declare an emergency on COM 2; which appeared to still be working and announced my intention to depart the traffic pattern to the east in order to complete the task of manually lowering the landing gear. I learned later in a telephone conversation with the Tower that my radio transmission was never heard. I turned to an easterly heading and continued to crank the gear down while visually monitoring for other traffic. After completing the manual gear extension; I reentered the right downwind leg of the right traffic pattern. I performed a low fly by past the Tower and because of the lost communications received a steady green light gun signal confirming gear being down. After completing a normal right hand pattern; I received a steady green light gun signal from the tower and proceeded to land. All phases of the landing; touchdown; rollout; and taxi to parking were normal and uneventful.After parking; to my chagrin and utter embarrassment; I realized that the alternator switches were in the off position. The full electrical power load had been on the battery alone and no input from the alternator.

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.