Although I’m now the proud owner of a Piper Saratoga, it took me several hundred hours of flying before I didn’t have to ask permission to use someone else’s airplane. Along the way, I’ve found that rental airplanes and even those operated by solo owners and partnerships have, shall we say, uneven characteristics. It’s like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates—you never know what you’re going to get.
For example, a large flying club I was in a few years back had a pair of Cessna Cardinal RGs. They were getting a bit long in the tooth, but were roomy and relatively fast, and they were good cross-country airplanes. They also were configured basically the same, with two nav/comms but little else: no autopilot, for example, GPS or DME. After getting to know them both, I came to prefer the blue-and-white one over the orange version, since it was a bit younger and cleaner. Neither let me down, but one was sold to someone outside the club and, shortly thereafter, another pilot landed the remaining Cardinal RG gear-up.
