I've squawked 7600 before when I had an alternator failure in a single engine and lost electricals including com. Transponders can still be read even when voice communications are much too weak to transmit. Could be the guy accidentally dialed in 7700 by accident in that situation. It does happen occasionally.
There is an urban legend that is taught to all new pilots about ATC telling the pilot to "Squawk altitude" which means his Mode-C is turned off. The trainee pilot, VFR level at 7500, dutifully squawks 7500. When he lands he has a nice contingent of police waiting to arrest the hijackers.
No idea if that actually ever happened or not, but it makes for good hangar talk. So I suppose if that story were true, and if the pilot wasn't particularly good at maintaining level flight, he could use the same logic to squawk 7700. Seems a bit far fetched, but then again I wouldn't have believe a US election could be stolen either...
I've squawked 7600 before when I had an alternator failure in a single engine and lost electricals including com. Transponders can still be read even when voice communications are much too weak to transmit. Could be the guy accidentally dialed in 7700 by accident in that situation. It does happen occasionally.
There is an urban legend that is taught to all new pilots about ATC telling the pilot to "Squawk altitude" which means his Mode-C is turned off. The trainee pilot, VFR level at 7500, dutifully squawks 7500. When he lands he has a nice contingent of police waiting to arrest the hijackers.
No idea if that actually ever happened or not, but it makes for good hangar talk. So I suppose if that story were true, and if the pilot wasn't particularly good at maintaining level flight, he could use the same logic to squawk 7700. Seems a bit far fetched, but then again I wouldn't have believe a US election could be stolen either...