Your scariest moment - In A 170

[zero.one.victor]

CIGARS works too: Controls-Instruments-Gas-Attitude( trim & flaps)-Radios-Safety(seat belts & doors)
Scariest moment for me was when a connecting rod broke at 1700', out over the salt water in the San Juan Islands. Turned out to be a non-event but it sure got the old heart a-pumpin'!

Eric

[Dave Clark]

" Scariest moment for me was when a connecting rod broke at 1700', out over the salt water in the San Juan Islands. Turned out to be a non-event but it sure got the old heart a-pumping'!"

Eric[/quote]

Gee Eric only a one liner? I was waiting for you to come in with this and expecting a lot more "and there I was" elaboration if not exaggeration of your great skills getting it down and all.

[doug8082a]

Hint: "Dick's" is a bar with live music on the San Antonio River-Walk. During some off-time at the mid-year meeting, our esteemed director Paul Woods Much-Better Half convinced many of us to go there after the evening meal, because she claimed to know the band and thought we'd all love it. Rumor rapidly spread that in reality, Debra simply loves Dicks. (But if you saw the pics you'd be certain Paul loves Dicks even more.) I'd post one, but it mightn't be the most prudent useage of our assn's webspace. Just another example of why members ought to participate in assn gatherings more.

Not even going to touch that one with someone else's 10 foot pole! It's damn funny though!

Hooboy!

[beeliner]

I don't qualify for this thread because my "key" moments were not in a 170, 170A, or 170B. But I would say that my love for a 170 was strengthened by this experience. A while after selling my first 170 (for cash flow reasons) I unwisely read too many stories about the affordability of experimental aircraft using converted automotive engines. So, for a fraction the cost of a 170, I bought a used but well-constructed homebuilt and began flying cheap - what a victory. It sure wasn't a 170 but it flew for pennies, was 2-place (usually just me), and was faster than the 170. Ignore the fact that it wasn't roomy, was noisey, and didn't have that slow approach and landing speed. One quiet evening I took off from our 2000 ft grass strip and the engine went into reduced power rough running at 100 ft agl just past the end of the strip. Looking ahead my first thought was 'land straight ahead'. The next road was out of reach. The corn was so tall that I knew I'd never be found if I couldn't get out on my own. I still had a little power so I started a gradual 180 over the corn while descending and got the threshold of the runway back in the windscreen, and the corn field behind me. But now I was over a soy bean field that had may areas of standing water. The runway was rising to the top of the windscreen as I was maintaining best glide speed and sinking toward the beans. The next thing I recall is the runway disappearing, replaced by the visual and loud hammering of 3' tall healthy soy bean rows hammering on the leading edges of my LOW wings (I was with the rows). After a couple seconds I had slowed to about 10mph. The dug up rows of beans were like an arresting cable on the wrong end. I cartwheeled and landed upside down in beans and mud. Initially I wasn't sure if I was burn to death from a fire (that never came) or just perish in this field without being rescued (no ELT required or equiped). My plexiglass canopy had broken and my head had hit the mud. During seconds of panic I took a knife sized piece of plexiglass and cut a hole in the side of the (thankfully) fabric fuselage and quickly squirmed out the side of the plane between stations and braces. My landing path only plowed up 50' of beans and ended next to standing water. When I walked to the road I looked back and was sobered to see that the plane was nearly invisible. The only thing barely visible above the record bean crop was one main gear wheel. I got away lucky, only needing stiches and a few pieces of plexiglass removed from my arm and head.

My next plane was another 170. It has a reliable aircraft engine, more room, a much slower landing speed and the safety of a high wing if I ever find myself upside down in a field again.

[cessna170bdriver]

[quote="gahorn"]I only fly B 170's so I can't add anything to this thread. Sorry.

George, I know you jest, but don't think the B-model can't get you into trouble as quickly as the others.

I once slipped mine with full flaps at 300 feet AGL (I didn't say it was a smart move.) The view out the windshield went from half sky/half grass to all grass in less than a heartbeat. To make a long story short, I was able to recover in time to land without bending or breaking anything.

Lesson learned: A superior pilot is one who uses superior judgement to avoid situations requiring superior skill.

Miles

[GAHorn]

OK, I'll go ahead and share my scariest moment in a 170.
It was pouring down rain and the road to my ranch-house was flooded/washed out. There was no way to get to town since the water was running about 5 feet deep and 30 knots across the low-water crossing to my place. No vehicle could possibly drive across it for the next 12-24 hours or so.
I kinda like sitting in the hangar with the door up and watching the rain and I was in the hangar sitting in the cockpit of N146YS trying to imagine how the panel would look with a full ILS installed and decided I needed a Becks/St. Pauli Girl beer when I suddenly froze!!... with the realization that the hangar refrigerator was empty of beer!
But then I remembered the party we'd hosted the day before and the ice-chest on the back porch was still full of icy water and cokes and beer.
Whew. What a scare that had been!

[Haydon]

George, the comic thoughts your response provoked are many. The first that came to mind was "dying of thirst" in a rain storm. The second thought was which end was "puckered" more. Further thoughts I will refrain from sharing....

[flyguy]

DAVE THIS IS GOING TO BE A SUPER THREAD. Kinda like the old Air Progress "Never Again" or Flying's - "I Learned about flying from that". It sometimes sent chills up your back but had good points to ponder. - .

The urge to terrify my self has dwindled down some in the last few years but about two times a year since 1972 I have usually created a "SUPER PUCKER SITUATION" OR BEEN MECHANICALLY DRUG INTO ONE!

I have the piston sitting here on my desk with the head of the valve still stuck in the hole it pounded through the top. Reminds me tht OLE MURPHY never sleeps! It was a dark night at K59 - Atchison Kansas on take-off to the south. A lady pax, who had never been any airplane, sat in the right front seat and my wife Deana in the back. We were off to view the Christmas lights down in the Plaza area of Kansas City. A full back-taxi to the north end of the runway - A very professional pre-takeoff cockpit check and after- into position and hold - full power down the runway to rotation speed and lift-off. Very cool air induced a nice rate of climb to about 200' then ---- BANG! ----SHAKE! ---LOUD BACKFIRING and noticable loss of POWER! WHAT THE H - - -? JERKED A ROD? LOST A CYLINDER OFF THE CASE? BROKEN CRANK? PROP BLADE GONE?

In the two mili-seconds I gave myself to take action I had several hours of my life pass before my eyes! It wasn't PURTY! Tall corn fields across the road to the south and steep ravines to the west and not much better to the right didn't offer much choice for safe landing so I pulled throttle and flap handle to full, instantly! Didn't think much about the full flap slip RESTRICTION! Roll her up on the wing and stab the opposite rudder to the firewall! It worked good and I touched down about a hundred feet from the end of the pavement. Standing on the brakes and holding hard aft on the stick, we ran off into the grass at the end of the runway and I did a "small radius" intentional ground loop to keep from plowing through the fence and into the road ditch. It didn't tip far enough to touch the wing to the ground or hurt the gear-box. The engine, which was still turning over and back firing like crazy was shaking nearly as much as I was. The oil pressure was holding so I quickly taxiied back to the ramp and shut down everything.

Deana leaned up between our shoulders from her seat in the back and asked "WHAT HAPPENED? "OH JUST A SMALL MISS ! MAYBE A FOULED PLUG! sez me Mr. Cool - - but I knew it was far worse! " Just you and Janice head back to the house. We will do the Christmas light viewing trip later!" Thankfully she never had a clue that things went pretty badly wrong on her "First Flight"!

After they left, I pushed DELTA back into the hangar and took off some stuff to find out what happened. I identified a cylinder with no compression and removed that plug for a look. Lots of debris showed on the plug and a look inside showed the broken valve head buried in the piston. When I thought of what could have happened if that valve had held on a couple more seconds or minutes was when I really got the scare. I might not be typing this little message had somthing like that happened.

OLE GAR' CREDO - - - I'D LOTS RATHER BE LUCKY THAN GOOD! often comes to mind.

TURTY YEERS OF FLYIN AN HEES A GOTS LOTS MORE STORYS TOO !

[zero.one.victor]

" Scariest moment for me was when a connecting rod broke at 1700', out over the salt water in the San Juan Islands. Turned out to be a non-event but it sure got the old heart a-pumping'!"

Eric

Gee Eric only a one liner? I was waiting for you to come in with this and expecting a lot more "and there I was" elaboration if not exaggeration of your great skills getting it down and all. [/quote]

OK, here goes: "and there I was, looking for a clean pair of skivvies....". If anything, I did a piss-poor job under pressure-- I later thought of several things I should have done & didn't, in spite of everyting turning out just fine. But you know how that monday-morning quarterbacking goes....
BTW, Dave,I was up at Stuart last Saturday. It was soft & muddy, surprising after all the clear dry wx we've been having.

Eric

[rudymantel]

OLE GAR' CREDO - - - I'D LOTS RATHER BE LUCKY THAN GOOD! often comes to mind.

Gary, you were BOTH !

Rudy

[doug8082a]

My scariest moment occurred right after we completed work on ‘82A last summer and before heading to the paint shop. The whole thing could have been avoided if I had listened to that little voice and hadn’t had a little bit of “get there-itis”.

It was Saturday, and the paint shop was expecting the plane for a Monday start. We had just completed the last of the refurb. work and I need to do the test flight. After chasing a mag problem to a bad P-lead, we had that fixed and were ready for the test flight. The plane had a number of things replaced during the refurb. including reskinned elevators, rudder, and new rudder cables.

As I was taxiing to the runway I had a quartering tailwind so it didn’t surprise me to need some right rudder to keep it straight, however it did seem a bit excessive – “Nah, must be the tailwind I’ve got”. (should have got out right then and checked things).

Got to the runway, did the runup, check the controls, everything looked good. The airport was busy as usual for the weekend, so when I got out onto the runway, I lined up and expedited the takeoff roll. As the tail came up and the mains left the ground I immediately knew I had a problem – I had the right rudder pedal all the way to the firewall in order to keep it tracking straight. As the nature of the problem sank in I continued to climb to pattern altitude. Had I been on the ball, I would have aborted the takeoff since I still had 2500’ of runway in front of me.

At any rate, I climbed into the pattern and began to check just how serious this was. “Hmmm, release some pressure on the right rudder and the plane banks left. Well, it’s left hand traffic so I can deal with that. ” I turned crosswind and tried a little more. “Let’s see, neutralize the rudder pedals… Whoa! Big left hand bank and a drop of the nose. Yes, we have no bananas, or in this case no right rudder. Yahoo!”

As I flew the rest of the pattern I decided my landing option was pretty obvious – wheel landing. The wind was shifting from 10-15 deg from the right to right down the runway. A three-point landing would need right rudder which I didn’t have. Wheel landing was the obvious choice. The winds managed to stay down the runway as I lined up on final which meant I only needed left rudder (which I had copious amounts of) when I lowered the tail on rollout. Not a big deal since I wheel land quite often anyway (I enjoy the challenge).

Since the situation obviously had my attention, I managed to make one of best wheel landings and got the tail down with no problem at all. After returning to the shop, we got it straightened out in about 30 minutes. Seems one of the young guys (not my regular mechanic) had rigged the rudders without making sure the pedals and rudder were centered.

Got it fixed, took another test hop and it was off to the paint shop.

Lessons learned
1. Listen to that little voice! The whole thing could have ended much worse. It also could have been avoided on the taxiway if I had listened to that little voice.
2. Make sure you are proficient at both wheel and three-point landings. You never know when you may have your options severely limited. Had the rudder been mis-rigged the other way, Wheel landing would not have been an option.

[jrenwick]

My scariest moment could have been in a 170, but it was actually in my J3 because I was between 170s at the time. Does that make this off-topic? If so, just imagine I'm flying my 170, please.

I was returning home after a really nice flight out for lunch in Wisconsin. I approached from the north, and tower advised me to enter left downwind for 36; I was pretty much straight in to downwind. Getting close to the field, tower advised me of traffic to my immediate left. I looked left, and saw I was about to collide with a 172 on crosswind. Wasting no time (read "PANIC") I pulled up (read "jerked the stick back) and missed him by a few feet. I was convinced we would have hit if tower had not called. Departing to the west, the 172 called and asked tower if they saw the J3 that almost hit them. Tower responded "yeah, we got the J3 to see you."

Afterwards, I had a real serious heart-to-heart talk with myself about what I was going to do to earn the right to go back in the sky.

Thinking back on it, I recognized that I had been focussed on the pattern entry and preparation for landing, and had not been paying any attention to the radio except to listen for my own call sign. I mostly use uncontrolled fields, and in that environment of course I'm listening to all the traffic and looking out for everyone, even those who aren't talking. At home, for some reason, I guess I had unthinkingly slipped into the habit of believing the tower would keep me out of conflicts.

I thought, when you fall off a horse, you need to get back on and get over it. The only way I could convince myself to fly again was to make a solemn promise to myself to pay attention to traffic at controlled fields no differently than I do at uncontrolled ones. So far, I've kept the bargain pretty well.

As a footnote: the 172 had probably just departed 36 and reached pattern altitude before or just after turning crosswind. My habit (learned at OSH) is to climb to a few hundred feet below pattern and level off until I'm out of the Class D airspace. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

John

[zero.one.victor]

Just goes to show you that controlled airspace or not, towered airport or not, radio-equipped airplane or not-- SEE AND AVOID! At a hangar assn meeting a while back, I brought up the fact that our airport seemed to be seeing a lot more negative-radio traffic lately, and we need to be vigilant and keep the eyes outside the airplane. One of our hangar owners (a retired airline pilot) remarked that the airport authority should make it a rule that everybody should have & use a radio! I told him he was missing my whole point - told him to check the FAR's & he'd see that they don't say anything about "must have & use radio" but do say very strongly that pilots in visual conditions must SEE AND AVOID.
I was flying in NAS Whidbey's Class C airspace not too long ago, and although I never ask for flight following they always call out traffic to me-- well, I watched another airplane go right by me in the opposite direction. He passed by me within a 1/4 mile, and the contrioller never said boo. Just goes to show ya, again.....

Eric

[k0al]

I've had two scary moments in a 170. Both occurred when hauling some sky divers some 30 years ago.

The first incident involved a mechanical problem. The co pilot seat and right door had been removed. There were two jumpers in the back, a third sitting on the floor strapped in with the co pilot seat belt.

The jumper on the floor was just holding his brain bucket on his lap. When he went to place it on his head, he evidently got it into the slip stream and it was jerked out of his hand. The slip stream carried the helmet back and struck the elevator counter balance hard enough to deform it to where the elevator was 'bound".

After giving my last thoughts and wishes for my wife and family to passengers, I had them exit the plane in the general vicinity of the field.

By experimenting with combinations of power / flap settings I was able to get the 170B back on the ground with no additional damage.

My respect for the 170 grew a whole bunch that day. I hauled quite a few jumpers after that and always made sure their brain buckets was attached before advancing power.

The second incident was when a jumper was fiddling with the smoke candle attached to his boot. You guessed it, the jerk set off the candle. A few intense moments followed with me screaming at him to get out and NOW. He was protesting that he wasn't over the target (this was a 4th of July jump over some park). I told him he could stay in the plane and we both could die or he could jump and explain to the event coordinator how he had goofed. He jumped. I never took him up again!

Allan Culbert

[AGB]

My scare moment:
I was getting checked out in tail draggers when after one takeoff the 170 got up to about 500 ft AGL and the engine started to loose power. The instructor started to mess with the mixture and throttle as we got back on the pattern. We eventually even climbed to about 1000 Ft, but the power wasn’t there. On the way back he even let me land, which I did despite the fact my approach was way too high ; )

But this was not the end of the story, the real scary moment is coming. After landing the owner of the plane checked it out on the ground and the engine was producing power normally, so he decided to check it out in the air. My mistake was that I went along. Before takeoff check of the engine looked fine, so off we went and sure enough again the engine lost power. Only this time at a much lower altitude, as he looked for a place to land, I realize how stupid I was for going along. We were able to maintain altitude, about 300 FT AGL and went around the pattern for landing.

In the end the problem was in the carburetor, and a new carburetor solved the mystery.

Moral of the story: think, that what the head is for!