Father Daughter Flying

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I took a short flight today with my daughter on board as my co-pilot. The last time we flew together was in the back seat of a Cessna 172 on fathers day a few years ago. That wasn't an especially enjoyable flight for Danielle. You see, up front was my flight instructor and a "one-legged" man. One-legged man was having a blast up there and asked the pilot to do something fun. Well, a loop was out of the question, so the pilot decided to do a few steep turns. Now, steep turns are fun when you are in the front seat, but in the back seat they are not too comfortable. It feels like your guys are sloshing around and nausia sets in very quickly. By the time we landed neither of us were very happy and I had Danielle's hand prints embedded in my arm from her holding on so tight.

Anyway, our flight today in Cessna 172 C-GVOR was much funner. We departed City Centre airport (CYXD) and headed north for a tour over St. Albert. Danielle surprised me with her keen eye as she was quick to spot our house, grandma's house, and the homes of some of her friends too.








After leaving St. Albert, we headed north towards Morinville. On the way there I showed Danielle the traffic on highway 2 and a few other landmarks. This was also a good opportunity to take the obligatory pilot/co-pilot photo. 

Heading west from Morinville, you can see our next waypoint Sandy Lake just below the horizon. It was going to take us a few minutes to get there, so I thought it would be fun to show Danielle how the flight controls work. I had her hold on to the yoke and then we applied a bit of pressure to make us bank left, then right, climb, and descend. She wasn't too keen on controlling the airplane.
  
 

Coming up to Sandy Lake, we noticed some sort of design on the lake. It looks like someone cleared a very long and windy skating track all over the lake. Or maybe it was some type of weird crop circles? We didn't see anyone skating, but man that is a long track. I estimate it is probably several kilometers long.







 Here is a closer view of the skating track.













More skating track...

Heading south from Sandy Lake, our next waypoint was Spruce Grove. Then, we returned to Edmonton for landing. Here we are coming in over the railroad tracks just north of Yellowhead trail on final approach for runway 16.

Now we're on short final runway 16 just moments before touching down. This is the runway the city has decided to close and from this perspective you can see why. Without the obstacle clearance required for arriving and departing aircraft, the area south of the airport could be built up. In this picture, notice how the height of the buildings drops off as you move rightward from the downtown core through the departure path of the runway.

This airport has a LOT of history. I hope it never closes like the Edmonton city council is planning. 

Here we are back at the Edmonton Flying Club. Thanks Danielle for flying with me in golf-victor-oscar-romeo, I hope we can do it again sometime...