A curious thing happened enroute: Upon requesting flight following from Toronto Centre, we were asked to "squawk ident", a not uncommon request when someone is trying to radar identify you. My instructor reached for the button, and was suprised to find -- instead of an ident buttona small hole where said button should be! How do you deal with that?!
She clicked the mic button instead, and reported "unable, due to Transponder malfunction". :-) I'll say!
Never scrimp on your walk-around, people... just because it ain't on the list, don't mean it's not important to check out -- I suspect I will be looking to see that my plane's ident button is actually there the next time I do a pre-flight inspection, lol!