Narrative:

While attempting to talk to ground and tower while parked on the north ramp I did not receive any responses back. Listened to ATIS again and heard that the tower closed each day at XA00. Checked the time and it was after XA00 Z and continued on as I would with a closed tower. I taxied to get fuel and continued to make radio calls and then took off. While in cruise I realized that the radio was not working correctly. After fixing the radio I continued the flight. While coming back to land at ZZZ I listened to ATIS 8 miles out and noticed that the time now said the tower closes at XA00 local time. I then called the tower and let them know that I had ATIS and requested to land and was cleared to land and landed with no incident. Contributing factors are a tower closure during this pandemic times; a radio that was not working correctly; and the XA00 local time vs zulu time and possibly not identified on ATIS as local time vs. Zulu time on the initial ATIS weather.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Pilot departed airport without communication with Tower. Pilot mistook LOCAL time for ZULU time; and departed the airport when Tower was open.

Narrative: While attempting to talk to Ground and Tower while parked on the north ramp I did not receive any responses back. Listened to ATIS again and heard that the Tower closed each day at XA00. Checked the time and it was after XA00 Z and continued on as I would with a closed Tower. I taxied to get fuel and continued to make radio calls and then took off. While in cruise I realized that the radio was not working correctly. After fixing the radio I continued the flight. While coming back to land at ZZZ I listened to ATIS 8 miles out and noticed that the time now said the tower closes at XA00 local time. I then called the Tower and let them know that I had ATIS and requested to land and was cleared to land and landed with no incident. Contributing factors are a Tower closure during this pandemic times; a radio that was not working correctly; and the XA00 local time vs Zulu time and possibly not identified on ATIS as local time vs. Zulu time on the initial ATIS weather.

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.