Saturday and the weather wasn't looking great, but I drove down to Brantford airfield in hope that it would clear. I took C-FAKQ out of the hangar for the first time. The plane started nicely and I taxied over to the
Flying Club to wait for Mark, my instructor who was going to give me a check-out on the type.
It was a bit windy, but with CYFD having 3 runways, it's usually down one of them. Today it was almost right down 29. I was a bit anxious, because this was going to be my first flight in my plane. Was I going to like it, will it be as good as I hoped? Did we make a good choice in the type, is it going to be reliable? As I taxied out to do the run-up, the weather still looked a little dodgy, it could be a short flight.
I rolled down the runway and felt the back of the seat pushing me and the plane up. The 200HP fuel injected engine sure makes this plane want to fly. I've mostly flown the C-172 and more recently the Cutlass RG which is 180hp. I climbed out on this cold crisp morning at 1450fpm. We headed west and found the clouds to be scattered, "let's climb up above them," Mark said and the plane began to show it's pedigree. Shortly after we were at 5500' and had sunny blue skies above. We went through a series of air work to get familiar with the plane. There were two remarkable things that I noticed about the Cardinal RG. The first was how responsive it is to the aerolons and to pitch. Compared to a normal 172 you feel you have much quicker control of the aircraft. Secondly, the visibility of the type, no struts to get in the way, no wheels, even good upwards visibility for the pilot. The hour and half went by very quickly and I wrapped up after doing several touch and go landings. I still can't get the grin off my face. Here's hoping for blue skies aboe tomorrow.
