Well it was August, 1995 and I had just finished replacing the windshield in my 1950 Cessna 170. I should probably explain why I needed in replace the windshield, if you would like to hear that part of the story. When I first purchased the plane, there was a small three or four inch crack near the top right-hand side of the old windshield.

At that time it wasn't serious enough to worry about. The plane survived many annual inspections, but the crack continued to grow over the years. As it grew larger I began placing duct tape beneath the crack, and using silicon sealer above the crack in order to keep moisture out. This worked quite well, even though the crack grew longer year by year

Also, I never gave much thought to the danger involved. Because the crack was near the top, and, with the pressure against the windshield while flying, I did not see where anything could go wrong, even if the crack spread entirely cross the top of the windshield.

Well, one day I found out. I had taken a couple of teenage boys for a ride and we landed on a rough gravel strip located along the Snake River in Washington's eastern dry country. As we landed the crack must have completed its journey across the top of the windshield without my knowledge.

It was a very warm day and there were many convection currents causing a considerable amount of turbulence. As we look off from the gravel strip and began to enter the turbulence, which caused the plane to rise in drop rapidly, I immediately noticed the crack had opened entirely cross the top of the windshield. But, instead of being pushed back against fuselage as I had expected it would, the curvature of the top of the plane was creating enough negative pressure to pull the windshield away from the fuselage instead of pushing back into place. As it turned out, there was about a three to four inch gap created by the pulling away of the plastic windshield. As we flew through the turbulence that gap would open and close with the bouncing of the plane.

I realized that my original expectations were totally wrong. The negative pressure over the top of the fuselage was trying to pull the windshield out of its seat along the sides and bottom where it was connected to the fuselage. If it were to dislodge and break into pieces it would surely enter the cockpit and cause much harm. As it turned out, we made it back to the little airstrip where I tied down without incident.

The lesson to be learned: there is a lot of suction above in a round the windshield of a Cessna. If you discover a crack in your windshield, replace it immediately.

And that is why I was replacing my windshield in August of 1995.

I had my plane tied down at a small ag strip near Benton City, Washington. The owner of the strip had a fairly decent hanger and allowed me to pull my plane in while I replaced my old windshield. The process took about a week and when I was finally finished and ready to role the plane out of the hanger, there was another gentleman waiting for me to move out of his way so he could spray paint a large metal storage tank in the same hanger. He was waiting politely and I didn't really need to hurry but I wanted to get out of his way and get in the air as quickly as possible.

Because I had been working on the plane over the past week I figured there was no real need to make a pre-flight inspection and I wanted to take the plane up above the air strip several thousand feet to make sure the windshield was going to perform properly.

That was mistake No. 1. Mark that!

Because of the location of the airstrip, I had cut my own foam blocks which I used to seal the air intake at the front of the cowling. This prevented birds from nesting under the cowling. I always removed those during the pre-flight inspection. But, as you may recall I did no pre-flight inspection.

As I relate this story, just for fun, see if you can spot all of the OTHER mistakes I made, and the things I didn't consider as we go. Keep in mind, that whenever something goes wrong during flight which you can't predict ahead of time, how you will respond. It is important to remember this if you ever have some trouble.

Now, on with the story! I climbed in the plane, fastened my seat belt and made sure all of the control surfaces worked. I set the mixture rich, set the throttle to about 1/8-inch, pumped the primer two or three times, turned on the master switch and set the mag switch on Left Mag.

On the 1950 Cessna 170 you actually PULL a knob on the panel attached to a cable which slides the starter gear against the crank gear and, at about the same time, makes electrical contact between the battery and the starter. There are no solenoids as there are in the newer planes.

I pulled the starter, the engine turned over, started, and I set the mag switch to BOTH. Because a taildragger tilts the engine back, the front part of the cam doesn't get much oil splashed upon it, so you set the idle to at least 800 rpm and 1000 is even better. I made sure everything was ready and taxied to the north end of the strip, near the orchard. The opposite end of the strip, which was only 1900 feet long (1400 feet paved) was open field, so that was the normal direction to take off. If you could land to the north, approaching over the open field, that was also the safest way to land, as there was the orchard to the north and also a 200 foot snag of an old tree that kind of got in your way at the north end of the field.

I gave it full throttle and took off. As I climbed, I watched my airspeed and the mating edges around the new windshield. I wanted to make sure nothing was going to pop loose or crack. The altitude of the field was 700 feet and I wanted to climb to about 4000 feet and circle for a while to make sure everything was tight. I made a large climbing circle around the field for a few minutes and finally reached 4000 feet.

After reaching 4000 feet I circled a couple of times and decided that the windshield was not going to give me any trouble. At that, I decided that as long as I was up in the air, I may as well go for a ride. As I came around toward the north, I straightened out my path, leaned the mixture, and trimmed for level flight. As I flew along I noticed how different the objects outside of the plane appeared with the new windshield.

The old windshield had only been a little over 1/8-inch thick with a reinforcing strip running down the middle. The new windshield was 1/4-inch thick and needed no strip down the middle. But, with the thicker material the refraction of light was more pronounced making objects seen through any molded portion of the plastic to appear distorted.

I probably spent two or three minutes examining this new issue before looking back to scan my instruments. When I did look back at the instruments I could see that the oil temperature had risen into the RED. That's when I realized that I had not removed the foam plugs in the front of the cowling. Immediately I knew what was wrong and what I needed to do about it. I turned off the mag switch and made a right turn to try to make it back to the field.

As it turned out, the prop continued to turn as I set up my glide back to the field. At first I had my doubts about whether I could glide that far. It looked a long way off. It was probably about four miles away. I was at 4000 feet, the elevation of the field was 700 feet, so how high was I above the ground? That's right: 3300 feet. According to Cessna's manual I should be able to glide horizontally 5000 feet for every 1000 feet of altitude. That meant I could probably go somewhere over 15000 feet, which is about three miles.

As I tried to maintain the least amount of drop in altitude by adjusting my airspeed I mentally kicked myself for my stupidity. I had just put in a brand new windshield and now I may have ruined the engine and may even end up crashing the plane. Have you ever been mad at yourself while in the air? I have, many times. Maybe you haven't made as many stupid mistakes as I.

As the minutes slid by I began to see that I was probably going to make it to the airstrip. The strip at Benton City lies to the south of the town, meaning - if you approach from the north, you come in over the center of town. The town itself isn't very big, maybe two blocks by two blocks, at the most. As I came in over the little town I found myself thinking, “OK, you're going to make it because you have plenty of altitude. In fact, you are too high.”

That is what I was thinking. (Stupid again) So, what does a good pilot do when he is to high on approach? He puts the plane into a slip, aiming the nose into the wind. I'm a good pilot, so, I put the plane into a slip and dropped altitude faster than I had ever dropped before. That makes sense because my prop was creating a lot of drag as it faced the on-coming wind and turned all of the moving parts within the engine.

Once I realized that I was crazy to go into a slip, it was too late. Now I was coming over the orchard of apple trees and the near end of the airstrip was way down at the other end of the orchard. I began trying to find a balance between enough airspeed to continue flying and enough nose-up attitude to keep me out of the trees below.

An interesting thing began to happen as I was coming to the south end of the orchard and skimming the tops of the trees: Each time a prop blade would feather up from beneath the bottom-left side of the fuselage and climb to the top of its arc. It would thow a bundle of turbulence up under the left wing. When that happened the plane would shudder and the stall warning horn would beep. I was getting close to the end of my flight and there were still some trees to cross over.

Another problem I considered was the possibility of motor traffic at the near end of the field, in front of the hanger. Because this was an ag strip there were often trucks with chemical tanks and other vehicles parked near the hanger which wasn't that far away from the runway. And the entrance to the field from the road ran across the north end of the runway. Fortunately, that day the field was clear.

Another predicament with coming in dead stick is the silence. Normally, people around an airport look up whenever they hear an airplane engine and consciously or unconsciously watch it as it circles and lands. Nobody hears a plane coming in dead stick and they are totally surprised as it swishes by and touches down with a couple of short squeeks from the main gear. Any number of individuals could have been walking on, near, or across the runway that day.

I don't know how close I came to the trees at the edge of the orchard before dropping down onto the runway and I don't want to know. All I know is that I landed the tail dragger in a three point position, threw on the brakes and just before stopping, let up on the left brake, swinging around 180 degrees.

I jumped out of the cockpit and ran around to the front of the plane to look at those sponge plugs I had placed in the openings. When I arrived at the front of the plane I was surprised to find that about half of them were still lodged in place and the rest were not there. Upon closer examination I could see that they had been sucked into the cowling and were laying around in different spots atop the cylinders.

That was the point at which my brain finally began to operate in a logical manner. It had been in a panic state from the time I first noticed my oil temperature was in the red. I don't consider myself really stupid. In fact, I have a pretty steady level of emotional stability. I find it very difficult to believe that I could actually lose my logical thinking ability and go into a semi-panic mode, but that's exactly what I did.

Here is what I should have done — several options as a matter of fact.

Consider this: I had climbed from 700 feet to 4000 feet, watching my instruments and the oil temperature never climbed above normal even while climbing. Why? Because I had the mixture set to RICH. It wasn't until after I leaned the mixture that the temperature began to climb. That's because there was enough air coming through the opening to cool the engine with some of the sponge plugs sucked into the cowling. All I needed to do was set the fuel mixture back to RICH when I noticed the high temperature, pull the throttle and glide for a minute or so and watch the oil temperature return to normal. Then I could have flown back to the field. But, my mind didn't even consider what had just happened, how would you respond?

The next thing to consider is this: As I was gliding back, I could have turned the mag switch on a couple of times for short intervals to gain or maintain altitude, and especially while I was making my landing. I didn't even consider it. It didn't cross my mind at that moment.

I relate this story for this reason. Previous to this I had a few other scary incidents and felt I was pretty secure and confident with my ability to handle an emergency. The fact is, I was overestimating my ability. You may have a similar incident occur some time. Are you prepared to respond instead of reacting? As you fly, enjoy the ride but at the same time remember that you are just as likely to have an emergency now as you were when you were being trained and the instructor pulled the throttle and told you to locate a good spot to let down. Don't get over-confident.