First Flight

July 15th, 1970.
Wilson Airport in Nairobi, Kenya, East Africa.
My 24-year-old father is sitting in the left seat of a Piper PA-28-140 Cherokee bearing Kenyan registration 5Y-AJJ.

The aircraft is likely only a few years old and, sitting on the tarmac of an East African airport with the engine turning smoothly over at idle, a long way from its home of Vero Beach, Florida.
In the right seat is rookie instructor pilot Murray Sinton.  My father is his first student. 40 years later, my dad would remember him fondly as his best instructor.

It's a work day and dad is likely on his lunch break.  At any rate, he's the boss...and who would question him if he stole away for an hour?  Furthermore, who would find him in the skies above Nairobi?

And it's clear my dad is excited.  After all, he had received his student pilot licence Number 2918 (K.337) from the Directorate of Civil Aviation East Africa only the day before this first flight. Why wait?




The cover of my dad's East African Licence booklet. (Family Collection) 

Student Pilot Licence 2918 (Family Collection)

The weather in Nairobi is typical for the season - sunny, with a few puffs of cotton ball cumulus and a pleasant 20 or 21 degrees Celsius.  Despite the moderate climate in Nairobi, it's stuffy inside the Cherokee's cockpit so Sinton has the only door propped open with his foot and the tiny storm window on my Dad's side of the canopy is hanging open.  A soft breeze is drifting back from the slowly turning propeller.

My father's copy of a Wilken Flying School checklist for the Piper Cherokee.  This is likely one of the first pieces of kit my dad would have bought for his training. (Family Collection)

Wilson Airport has two asphalt runways: 07/25 at 4,798' and 14/32 at 5,052'.  Oddly enough, the runway orientation is exactly the same as Ottawa's International Airport.  It isn't possible now to know which runway the two men used on their first flight together but we can draw some conclusions.

After receiving clearance from the tower, Sinton yanked the door closed and snapped the lock above his head.  He likely called for my dad to close the storm window before advancing the throttle.  Alpha-Juliet-Juliet then began rolling forward, engine at full power, Sinton's left hand on the throttle and his right resting on the control yoke.  Wilson sits at just over a mile above sea level so Sinton likely held the boxy trainer on the runway a few beats longer than usual before easing the yoke back.

As Alpha-Juliet-Juliet's wheels left the ground at 12:25 p.m. that Wednesday afternoon, my father, a captive passenger, was hooked forever.

The cover of my Dad's logbook. (Family Collection)

The flight lasted only half an hour - Sinton landed Alpha-Juliet-Juliet just shy of 1 o'clock.  The notations in the dad's logbook, set down in his hand 42 years ago, betray none of the emotions he must have felt.  On cream-colored paper, in blue ink, the particulars of the flight are recorded dispassionately: date, aircraft type, registration, captain, etc, etc, etc.  In the remarks section of his then-new log book, he wrote down "No. 3" - the lesson number for "Effects of Flight Controls".  It is a rather poor estimation of the effect that flight had on my dad that day...and for decades to come.

The first page of my Dad's logbook.  The flight in question is at the very top.  Half-way down the right side is Murray Sinton's signature confirming the hours flown in July, 1970. (Family Collection)

I don't know what happened to 5Y-AJJ.  I can find no record of its fate or where it is today.  I'm equally ignorant as to Murray Sinton's whereabouts.  I only know that, when my dad was issued his private pilot's licence, he gave Sinton one of 6 silver eagles he had made by a Nairobi jeweler. Sinton was overjoyed.  Some time later, my dad had several more made in gold - of which only one survives.

I do know that my dad's first instructor and the plucky American-built, East-African transplanted trainer sparked a lifelong love that would have three generations gazing skyward in awe.

Origins

My dad was born in the municipality of San Giacomo degli Schiavoni, province of Campobasso in the Italian region of Molise...about where the base of the calf begins on the Italian boot.
San Giacomo is a small town on the Adriatic coast - a charming union of craggy hills, sunflower choked fields, pristine sandy beaches and sapphire blue waters.  In the fall of 1945, about 1200 people called it home.  The town's population hasn't varied in numbers by more than a dozen since then.

My uncle Dante, my father & their cousins Ivana & Franco in San Giacomo circa 1955. (Family collection)

Antonio Francesco Rotondo came into the world on September 2nd, 1945 - the first-born son of Giovanni and Donata Rotondo (neé Sorgini).  There is some confusion surrounding the exact time of my dad's birth.  My grandmother maintained (and she would know) that he was born "on the second, after midnight".  She would scoff when anyone pointed out the obvious.
At any rate, the house he was born in still stands.  At least the stone walls do.  The roof has long since rotted away and the ever-present sunflowers that grow like weeds now call it home.

My dad in Termoli, aged about 18 years old, circa 1963. (Family Collection)

There is nothing in my father's origins or upbringing that would suggest a love for flight or any sort of aptitude for aviation.  His parents were farmers.  He liked hunting as a kid.  He once built a make-shift pistol which promptly backfired and put a rather large hole in his cheek.  He was an atrocious athlete and won the dubious nickname of "mani de merda" - literally "hands of shit."  He claimed to play the harmonica.  He was an above average student and graduated from a community college with the title of "geometrist."  He was well-liked and charming...and flighty.

Dad in Toronto, 1965. (Family Collection)

I suppose it was that inclination - a desire to leave home, see the world, strike out on his own - that brought him to Canada in 1965.  He lasted 2 years in Toronto and then took a job in Africa.

He was 23 and project manager tasked with building a water treatment plant in Bukoba, Tanzania. 

Trying to start a generator in Bukoba, 1968 (Family Collection)

He lived in the captain's cabin of a rust-bucket moored to the shore of Lake Victoria.  There was likely nothing to do except work, sweat, burn in the sun, worry about malaria and slowly go insane from mosquito buzz-jobs.

My dad wasn't one for vices - in fact, he hardly drank.  He enjoyed wine because it was constantly on the table as he was growing up but, other than that, he deplored anything in excess and, in his mind, getting blind drunk, even a few times, was the mark of an alcoholic.

Striking a pose in his office, Bukoba, August 20th 1969  (Family Collection)

Despite this, he was arrested once - with his entire crew of workers - for threatening a bar owner who refused to serve them drinks.
They had spent 18 hours pouring concrete and needed to put out some fires.  Turns out the bar was closed.  A few heatstroke, fatigue fuelled words later and the local gendarmes were called. 

Building the water treatment plant in Bukoba, September 1970 (Family Collection )

So, he came home one sticky night with a paper bag filled with basement gin and vermouth and set out to drink it all.  And when he shot his only living household companion, a fern, full of holes with a pellet gun because he "had nothing better to do", I suppose he figured he needed a hobby.

He found it in Nairobi, Kenya...at Wilson Airport and Wilken Aviation.

Darned Small Airplane

The DSA-1 Smith Mini-plane is one of those rare machines born in the forever blue skies of a dreamer's mind.
It is rarer still because it found its way through those fickle halls of air and onto the pages of a notebook to be proudly rolled out of a hangar in all the splendour of gleaming paint and taut, doped fabric.
And it is small.
In fact, the aircraft's designer, Frank Smith, used the aircraft's model name as a lasting tribute to its compact design.
At 15 feet long, with a stubby wingspan of 17 feet, standing only 5 feet tall and weighing, fully loaded, less than one thousand pounds it is a "Darned Small Airplane" indeed.
And it is cute.
The story goes that Frank Smith wanted to design a fun, little bi-plane; one that would be easy to build, fly and maintain.  In 1958, he built and flew the prototype, N90P.  It now sits in the EAA Air Venture museum in Oshkosh, WI.

DSA-1 N90P Courtesy: Air Venture Museum

Smith drew up the plans and set things up to offer his joyful little bi-plane to anyone with enough time, effort, love and patience to build a dream.  He would never see the popularity his design would eventually enjoy.  Frank Smith died of a heart attack shortly after completing the prototype.  His work was carried on by his wife and son...and every pilot who ever strapped on a Mini-plane and opened the throttle.

The Smith is a throw-back to leather flying caps, gauntlets, pencil-thin moustaches and twinkling eyes hiding behind oil speckled goggles.  It belongs in a world of sun-swept, grass fields, open cockpits, and boot-scuffed floor boards where the air smells of oil and gasoline and the word "contact!" is bellowed with conviction before the sound of a cracking prop and purring engine.

The Smith is every pilot's dream and guilty pleasure.

I've never flown one.  I was 4 years old the last time I sat in one.  And yet, I can say these things and believe them with more certainty than I can muster to say there is a God.

I can say these things because that cute little airplane with the red-and-white rising sun paint job sparked a love affair that will burn inside me until my dying day.  It lives forever in my heart and mind, rocking gently in a stiff breeze coming off the Ottawa River, every wooden rib, metal strut and flying wire flexed like muscle, waiting silently to bound down the runway and leap into the wild blue yonder.

The Smith carries only one pilot - in a single, open cockpit.  One heart, when opened, can carry the hopes and dreams, joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats of a thousand.

If you want to come along for the ride, it is necessary that you understand such things.

A fire under my ass...

On most days, I wake up at 5:00 a.m.
On most of those days, I hit the snooze button on my blackberry alarm at least twice.
On May 14th of 2012, I did just that...only something felt different, odd...
I chalked it up to a late dinner the night before and went about my day.  I work in television tasked with recording the passing parade without prejudice or bias.  I like my job but like most people on most days, I put in the required level of effort and attention and produce a product I feel good about.  On rare, beautiful occasions, I am moved to bring all my meagre resources and talent to bear...and craft a 47 minute visual symphony of news, current affairs, lifestyles, health, consumer and the odd rarity or absurdity.
I crave those days. 
And in an industry that is at times both flourishing and wilting, those rare bursts of inspiration seem to come less frequently and at greater intervals.
May 14th sat somewhere in this creative abyss; commonplace, pedestrian, boring.  And so, during a lull in what should be the most exciting part of my day, I spent a few minutes browsing through Transport Canada's civil aircraft registry.
I typed the letters "FFAM" into the search field for aircraft marks and looked up two lonely entries.

1		Smith Miniplane	SMITH MINI-PLANE	EM 8936	Cancel C of R	2000-05-23	Lequin, Michel	1988-05-13
2		Smith Miniplane	SMITH MINI-PLANE	EM 8936	Cancel C of R	1988-03-31	Otondo, Af	- -

I'd read the first name at least a hundred times before.  I'd never met the man.
The second name belonged to a stranger only because a Transport Canada registrar had omitted a letter from my father's name 24 years before.

As the entries stared back at me, a felt a pinprick of that familiar but fleeting passion.  As I watched the clock chronicle the passing of my day, that sting swelled and swelled and swelled...

So, shortly after we went to black that Monday afternoon, my colleagues began to filter out until only one remained.  We stayed at our positions, chatting idly about the weekend, while all I could think about was making a phone call.

I told Andre about my "project." I thought it was a clever name for what I was doing.

"You should give him a call," he said.

"You don't think it's odd?"  I answered.  "After all this time?  Ringing him up out of the blue like this?"

"Why not?"

Why not, indeed.

And so begins the chronicling of a quest to find a beloved little airplane, tell its story and honour my dad.