A new club

I absolutely loved my flight school (Cooking Lake Aviation) and I wouldn't change a single thing about the experience I had there. In addition to flight training, they also rent their airplanes and so I intend to carry on out there as I build my hours as a pilot. They have very nice, fairly new Cessna 172s with beautiful Garmin 1000 digital avionics, and they do all the work of fueling and moving the planes to get them ready for you. However, renting an airplane is very expensive so I have been thinking about ways to reduce my costs.

Last month, I went out to pay a visit to the Namao Flying Club out at Villeneuve airport on the northwest side of the city. It's a little farther away for me but their rental rates are the lowest of anywhere around here so I wanted to check it out to see if it would be an option for me. In addition to saving me some money, flying out of that club/airport offers me experience in controlled airspace (Villeneuve is a controlled airport) and a chance to fly older planes with analog instruments and carbureted engines, which is more like real life when buying one's own airplane, in case I ever decide to do that.

Namao has four Cessna 172s. As well, thinking ahead, they also have a Mooney M20D, which is a faster single engine with retractable gear and a constant speed propeller, two things that would be new for me and would be the next step up for me once I gain some more experience. Way down the road, they also have a twin engine Piper I could learn to fly if I do a multi-engine rating. I was impressed by my visit there so I signed up for membership in the club.

All the planes were inside the hangar when I visited!

Since then, I've done 3 flights with an instructor there because an initial checkout on type is required to be able to fly their planes. The checkout was like a mini flight test so I was glad that was still fairly fresh in my mind. The instructor I flew with was awesome and gave me some great tips and helped me feel comfortable in these planes, which are a bit different than what I'm used to.

For the first flight, we did upper air exercises like stalls and steep turns.

The second time I flew with him, I had to demonstrate an emergency landing. He surprised me by pulling the power back to idle, which mimics an engine failure and makes the plane descend fairly quickly. The closest field for me to choose was a canola field right below me. I maneuvered the plane down to it. We didn't actually land but for a transcendent and beautiful moment, just before I gave it power and went back up, we were flying quietly and slowly just above all that canola and my vision was filled with yellow. It was amazing!

Flying over beautiful canola fields north of Villeneuve Airport

My third flight with him was yesterday; we went to the nearby Parkland airport to do circuits. He told me that I fly well and my landings are safe so I am now free to fly their 172s to my heart's content.

Beautiful day over Parkland county, south of Villeneuve