The Cessna 172N 'Thunderchicken'

C172N 'XRL' in Pikwitonei 

The first summer flying for Skyward was spent mostly @ the controls of C-GXRL a Cessna 172N. It's still one of the nicer airplanes I've flown, very easy to fly, always flew straight, and never left me stranded. The panel was modestly equipped with two VHF radios, one VOR, and one ADF. A little lacking in the GPS department, however, I was lucky enough to have a good friend who lent me his Garmin hand held. The 172, being not much of a cargo hauler, was tasked primarily with charters. Most of my time was spent taking government people around and running crew changes for the Medevac folks based in Cross Lake and Norway House. The most popular destinations were Pikwitonei and Thicket Portage. Two communities on the Hudson Bay Rail line about 30 miles south east of Thompson. One trip back and forth usually got me 1.0 in the logbook. Charters were interesting as you never really knew what your day was going to bring. However, the downside was the days you spent flying to some community and holding. My longest hold was probably around eight hours. I found though, as long as you brought something to do, the time would go quick.

Most 172N's came equipped with a 160hp Lycoming O-320 driving a 2 bladed, fixed pitch propellor. Through an upgrade from Penn Yan , XRL now operates a Lycoming 0-360-A4M which puts out 180hp. We flight planned at a block speed of 105KTAS and a fuel burn of 60Lbs per hour. With a tank capacity of 300Lbs, that gave XRL about 5 hours of endurance covering just over 500 NM. The longest trip I ever took on the 172 was from Thompson to Churchill and back. The trip took over 2 hours to get to Churchill and over 3 hours to get back to Thompson, grounding sometimes as slow as 72kts. The flight path back to Thompson was littered with Thunderstorms, so some weaving around was necassary. When I got back to Thompson a forest fire had broken out roughly 10 miles north of the airport. A line of Towering Cumulus cloud erupted above the fire and downwind as far as the eye could see. No more then ten minutes after landing, the wind shifted and the airport was became completly covered in smoke. The visiblity dropped to 1/2 mile. I got in just @ the nick of time. The fire burned out of control for one month sucking up 40,000Ha. Started by lighting on July 12th, it was not extinguished until October 14th.

XRL was a good little time builder. The 180 horses seemed to do it well. Leaving the 2200' strips in Pik and Thick on a hot day with myself and three passengers, she would still take to the sky with ease (although not so much without the flaps @ 10, almost found that out the hard way). In the fall of 2003, XRL was taken out of service @ Skyward and sold. Occasionally I see her sitting on the ramp in Winnipeg. I'm not sure what her owners do with her now.