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JES was in maintenance when I went down for my flight with TOI. I took advantage of the extra time to review some of my emergency procedures while we were waiting for them to finish up.

I positioned myself in the room I recall oh so well from my less than lovely ground school hours, that does have the advantage of giving you a good view over the hanger.

Once I could see that they had finished I wandered down and had a chat with them about the work that they had done. Turns out it was a simple replacement of the directional gyro. Nothing to be concerned about. As usual I thanked them for taking good care of JES, letting on that she was my favourite plane in the fleet.

Well it is nice to know that I’m not the only one who holds this opinion. Awesome Maintenance Guy (AMG) also has a bit of a soft spot for the R model 172. We both agree that it’s just so much more balanced as a plane, an opinion he demoed by balancing his wrench on the end of his finger, the fine balance of airframe and engine combining to make a plane that is nimble to manoeuvre.

Of course the down side of this, he commiserated is that it takes one heck of an effort to stall. Good in flight, a pain during training. I mock flexed my (non-existent) muscles at him and pointed out that I was only too aware of this fact!

Laughingly dismissing his idea that when I was done I could “just taxi really fast” and he was sure I’d be able to make the small gap in the hanger doors, I started my walkround in the comfort of the hanger as AMG went to do the inevitable paperwork. Then I wandered back into dispatch to grab my usual plethora of upholstery.

“What, have you broken it already?” he wanted to know.

I assured him I’d done nothing of the kind, I wouldn’t dare disturb his masterpiece of engineering!