First Solo

September 2nd, 1970.

C-FFAM is still in paper form - sketches on the ruled pages of a black notebook.  Her registration is still unclaimed - one of thousands on the Department of Transport books. 

It would be months before someone picked up the notebook with any real intent.  

It would be years before the red and white Mini-Plane would spring off the pages of that tiny notebook - its 85 horsepower engine breaking the silence of an Ontario airport.

Dad and a colleague with the company Land Rover near Nairobi, 1969 or 1970. (Family Collection)

Thousands of miles away, across one ocean, three continents and the heavy heat and thick haze of the equator, my dad is driving his Landrover to Wilson Airport.  

The red dust churned up by his tires catches the rising sun in gritty flashes of tawny golds and browns.  The air of this September dawn in pleasantly crisp and cool.  The sun's newborn rays have yet to tease the Kenyan plains with their warmth.

In the distance, an airplane's engine coughs and catches.

Today is my dad's 25th birthday.  He woke at the ungodly hour of four in the morning.

The Kenyan uniform: T-shirt, khaki shorts, flip flops...and a Land Rover in Nairobi, 1970. (Family Collection)

Today's lesson is the circuit.  The last 15 lessons - roughly 13 hours in the air - have been the circuit.  My father has the racetrack patterns around each of Wilson's two runways etched in his mind. He could, if he wished and was devoid of any common sense, fly the circuit with his eyes closed. For exactly one month, all he has been doing is take-offs and landings, downwind and pre-landing checks, rotations and round-outs.  For most of that time, Murray Sinton has been sitting next to him, helping to hone a ham-handed student into one that stands a reasonable chance of leaving the earth in an airplane...and returning to it in one piece.

Today is different.  

When my father yells "clear" and cranks the engine on 5Y-AJI, the instructor is Lennox.  Lennox is checking Sinton's work. 

The time is 6:15 when Juliet-India climbs away from Wilson Airport.  The horizon is beginning to boil under the east African sun.

Half an hour and four circuits later, the Cherokee returns to earth and taxis slowly to the Wilken ramp.  The door is shoved open against the propeller's idle breath and Lennix slides out onto the wing.  He turns back, crouches behind the shield of the door, cups his hand to his mouth and shouts a few words to the pilot.  A curt nod and the door is pushed closed.  Lennox claps his right hand on the top of the Piper's cabin and steps off the wing's trailing edge to the ground.  He walks backwards for a few feet as the Cherokee's engine picks up and the plane taxis for the runway.

At 6:45, Alpha-Juliet rattles into the air with my dad at the controls solo for the first time.  It is every pilot's first test and every pilot's most private feat of accomplishment.  It is a rite of passage...for when one returns to earth, they do so changed, older, with a hint of swagger in their step and a heart swelling with pride.

The page for September 1970 from my dad's logbook.  His first solo is on the 3rd line. (Family Collection)

I can only imagine what happened inside the sanctum of the cockpit since my dad never spoke of his first solo - at least not in any detail.  About the most I ever garnered only came on the heels of my own first solo some thirty-two years after his.

"I soloed today," I'm speaking into the handset of an ancient, mildewed and rusting payphone in the anteroom of an equally ancient, mildewed and rusting mess hall of a little used, sand-choked scout camp near Les Cedres, Quebec.

"Beautiful," came the muffled reply.  "How was it?"

"Awesome," seemed to be a fitting answer. 

"Did they splash you with water?"

"Yeah."

"Hot or cold?"

"Hot," I said.  "Then cold."

"Mine was cold."  

I could almost hear the twinkle in his eyes.

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.