Small Aircraft
Flight Crew Student
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 20; Flight Crew Total 87; Flight Crew Type 72
Situational Awareness; Confusion; Communication Breakdown; Training / Qualification
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Airspace Structure; Environment - Non Weather Related; Human Factors
Early morning at roughly XA:30; Aircraft X flew from the west into ZZZ for pattern work. At the time Aircraft X was the only aircraft that was currently in ZZZ's airspace at the time of the event. Initially Aircraft X made a call to ZZZ Tower asking for pattern work. Since the aircraft was positioned over the mountains the response for ZZZ Tower came in weak. Clarification was requested by pilot flying and stated that the Air Traffic Control Tower was closed. The pilot flying treated the airport as a non-towered airport and switched frequency to XYY.Z. From that point the pilot flying used non-towered airport call outs to announce position. After completing three laps in the pattern an airport operations vehicle flagged down the pilot in command. The pilot in command then preceded to reject the takeoff and continue to the run up area. Airport operations advised the pilot to contact Tower at XXZ.A where the pilot was advised that he could continue pattern work yet had to take a phone number down. Pilot took down phone number and contacted Tower staff after the flight.Due to COVID-19 many ATC facilities are having to temporary close down due to cleaning. ZZZ has also been changing hours of ATC operation in the last ninety days. Pilots from ZZZ1 have also run into the problem of not properly reaching Air Traffic Control due to altered non-posted hours.The pilot in command flying was a student pilot that had recently soloed. When contacted by an airport operations vehicle; [they] only asked for intentions which the pilot responded that he was doing pattern work. At the time it could not be depicted if the airport operations vehicle told on XYY.Z to contact Tower on XXZ.A. In the future [if] airport operations could do this it would help. At the time the pilot thought the airport operations vehicle was attempting to do a FOD patrol of the runway since it was the early morning. The aircraft has been in the past known to have radio issues at random times.The student pilot will go over procedures with Class Delta airports with a flight instructor to mitigate problems in the future.
GA student pilot reported frequency communications issues while flying to an airport whose Tower services were not in use.