Into Valhalla

A snowflake is falling.  Drifting lazily in circles - each one different than the last - it drops softly through the silent air.  You learn very early in life that each snowflake is different - often in an imperceptible way - but unique nonetheless.  For a short time, as it falls, it boasts that distinction - although, really, no one will ever take note of its subtleties. 

Once it meets its snowy destination, it is swallowed by the masses.

On this particular day, this once particular snow flake has met its end on the top wing of a truly unique piece of machinery.

To look at her, you would never know her true past.  FAM looks nothing like I remember and that's painful too when you consider how it seared itself into my soul and guided what is now an inseparable part of my life.

Truly, I struggle to call it a part at all.  Without this, I am not whole...but a shell.

Before me then, lies a shell.

Someone has painted her in canary yellow.  Here and there are slashes of blue and white - almost like barred teeth but seemingly applied without care, rhyme or reason.  Her new paint scheme resembles the "dazzle" coats applied to warships during the Great War except, well, yellow.

A rather offensive shade of yellow.

Her nose is tucked into the snow as if she's hiding in embarrassment.  Her wheels are crumpled up beneath her lower wing.  Metal rods chain her to the frozen earth.  Her rudder is awkwardly deflected to the right - where it would be if you were starting the take-off roll. 

Squatting on the snowy ground, on broken haunches, her back appears hunched, coiled, fearful.

These are all living qualities that I have applied, some would say unwisely, to a mere airplane.  I don't expect too many people to understand.

In the background, an elephant ambles by.

The former C-FFAM - now a static diplay at the Granby Zoo.  (Photo Courtesy: Martin Ujlaki)

C-FFAM is now a playstructure in the Africa exhibit of the Granby Zoo.  Granby, Quebec lies halfway between Montreal and Sherbrooke to the east.  It's an incongruous final resting place and a long way from Maple Airport where FAM made her first flight.  Maple Airport, for the record, no longer exists.  It is now a housing subdivision. 

To the casual eye, it would appear that FAM's intrepid pilot crash-landed in the African dunes - perhaps on a mail run or, as was the fashion in the early days of aviation, a record breaking flight.  This pilot has since committed the fatal error of leaving his machine only to be swallowed by the sand.  The whole thing is very Saint Exupery-ish - think "The Little Prince" - although I suspect that is rather the point.

FAM is waiting for the summer when the children will return to clamber over her pockmarked skin, recently covered in $15,000 worth of fibreglass, and dream fanciful dreams of aerial adventure.

The biplane's new mission.  (Photo Courtesy: Alain Maille)

My dad died one year ago this day - just shy of 8 in the morning.  I wasn't with him.  Putting aside all the rest, that fact alone will require a lifetime of limitless self-reflection and forays into an endless emotional morass. I lack the stomach to even consider it.  One year on, I thought I would feel better.

The fact is, I feel much, much worse.

It is a daily struggle for my family - one that requires, for lack of a better term, balance.

To that point, my dad was born on September 2nd - 9/2...and died on the 9th of February - 2/9.

That's oddly cyclical and balanced for a man who struggled with both.

Dad on his 66th and last birthday.  (Photo Courtesy: Family Collection)

So, almost 30 years after lighting in me that passion for flight, it seems just as oddly fitting that his former mount is doing the same for other children.

I've yet to visit FAM.  To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that I want to.  Perhaps, I'm merely not ready to.  When I first discovered her whereabouts, I was excited to visit the Granby Zoo and, who knows, perhaps sit in the cockpit again.  Instead, I embarked on this journey which has been both uplifting and crushing - often in the same instant.

I am happy I did this. I am sad that she will never fly again. 

A future pilot learning the craft.  (Photo Courtesy: Alain Maille)

I am incredibly moved, overjoyed even, that in the hearts and minds of the youngsters who climb into her single seat...she does take flight, every day, to far off distant lands and days long ago lost in the sands of time.

She will, however, remain a lasting monument to my dad and his love of flight.

Antonio Francesco Rotondo
2/9/1945  -  9/2/2012
"Blue Skies Forever..."

Descent

In the spring of 1988, C-FFAM left Rockcliffe for the last time - not on her twin wings but on the back of a flatbed truck.
Her destination was Sainte Anne du Lac - a tiny hamlet wrapped around the base of a T-shaped lake about 20 miles north of Mont-Laurier, Quebec.
Sainte Anne is home to a water aerodrome and a short grass strip.
Her new owner was Michel Lequin.
Lequin is a bush pilot and a bit of a homebuilt expert - designing and building the Tapanee Levitation 4.  I reached him by phone in May of 2012.

A brand new C-FSBQ pictured at RCAF Station Greenwood in Nova Scotia.  This picture was taken during Air Force Day in 1967.  Note the "I" struts in place of the usual "N" struts.  They are stronger while causing less drag. (Photo Courtesy: Bob McLeod)

Before C-FFAM, Lequin owned and flew another Smith Miniplane.  C-FSBQ was built by Robert P. McLarnon in Atlantic Canada - likely Nova Scotia in 1967.  Lequin bought it in August of 1976. 
Despite remaining on the Transport Canada registry, SBQ was wrecked in the late 80s - before Lequin sought out and purchased FAM from my dad.  He immediately disassembled the airplane and carried out repairs.  He put FAM back together on March 20th, 1989 - making his first flight, a local half-hour hop, 2 days later.

The weight and balance sheet for FAM prepared on the day of her first flight under Lequin's ownership.  (Photo Courtesy: Alain Maille)

Lequin replaced the turtledeck and canopy the aircraft originally wore in her first few years.
Lequin's intent was to use the biplane for aerobatics but the C85-equipped FAM was considered underpowered.  He removed FAM's original propeller and replaced it with a longer model after his first flight.  While he searched for a more suitable engine, he put nearly 30 hours on the airplane flying short, local trips.

In April of 1991, FAM was entering her 18th year and needed work. The airplane's top wing was showing some twisting.  Lequin suspected issues with the spar and decided to rebuild the wing. He moved the airplane into a friend's hangar.  Having found an engine, he removed the faithful C85 that had carried FAM through roughly 1,000 hours and in and out of airports stretching from Maple to Ste. Anne du Lac. 

Then, one summer's day in 1991, Lequin received a phone call from his friend - the hangar's owner.

"Hey, I moved the Mini outside so that I could work on my airplane," he began.  "But there's a storm coming tonight.  You'd better tie her down."

Lequin was delayed making it out to the airport and by the time he arrived, the storm had already swept through and wreaked havoc.  FAM weighed less than 700 pounds empty.  Without the engine hung on the front end, she was little more than a kite. 

The wind had swept through Ste. Anne du Lac with a fury.  It picked FAM up and flung her thirty feet across the ramp.  The little biplane landed on her back - crushing the vertical stabilizer and crumpling the top wing Lequin had been rebuilding. 

Lequin didn't think it made any economic sense to repair the airplane.  FAM was pushed up behind the hangar and left to rot - her sides laid open, wings limp and flightless, and button nose left discarded on the grass under the void where her engine used to be.

And there she sat, forlornly passing the days as the skies she used to dance in slipped by slowly overhead.  Leaves turned brown, lost their hold and fell around her.  In some places, her cherry red paint began to wear away - revealing traces of her original blue coat.  Her airframe, still solid, creaked and groaned with every passing gust of wind. 

FAM was an airport orphan and remained so for 9 long years.

C-FFAM as Maille found her in 2000 - 9 years after being wrecked in a storm at Ste. Anne du Lac.  (Photo Courtesy: Alain Maille)

Then, in 2000, Alain Maille happened by.  Maille, like Muller, Miller, Rotondo and Lequin before him, had caught the biplane bug.  For as long as he could remember, he wanted to fly one.

And so, here was one - rough around the edges but a biplane all the same.  FAM was, quite literally, in pieces.  She had no engine, no instruments, damaged wings, a crushed tailplane and was missing parts, pieces and fabric.  And yet, Maille saw none of that.  What he did see was promise.

FAM's starboard side in 2000.  (Photo Courtesy: Alain Maille)

Maille bought FAM for $5,000 and, once again, the hulk of the once pretty airplane was loaded onto the back of a flatbed and trucked south to Mont-Laurier.

FAM's crushed vertical stabilizer showing her registration and traces of her original paint job applied by Ernst Muller in 1973.  (Photo Courtesy: Alain Maille)

When I spoke to Lequin, he was very helpful in putting me in touch with Maille.  He warned me, however, that he believed Maille had bought the airplane for parts and that he feared FAM had been broken up some years ago.  He gave me Maille's contact information and wished me the best of luck.

Later that same afternoon, I made my first call to Maille's home in Mont-Laurier.  He returned the call in the evening and was immediately apologetic.  Maille believed I was looking to buy his biplane and regretfully told me that he had sold it years ago and that it was no longer flying.

My French is passable but by no means strong.  I would characterize Alain's English as more or less the same.  We fumbled through the conversation for a quarter of an hour before we discovered we could both speak Spanish.  It was a happy coincidence.

I learned that Maille had kept FAM in his garage for 5 years.  He loved the biplane and always believed he would restore it to flying condition because her structure was sound and all she really needed was some repairs, new fabric, an engine and prop.  He kept the dream alive until his Jodel  F-11 needed some restoration work and Alain needed money to get it done.  As much as it broke his heart, he sold the Miniplane to a firm that built play structures and decorations for parks.

Alain Maille's 1975 Jodel F-11 C-FJJY (pictured here on skis) - built by Peter Chandler and owned by Maille since 1988.  (Photo Courtesy: Alain Maille)

Before FAM was trucked off again, Maille, for reasons he fails to recall or justify, removed the aircraft's data plate.  He tucked it into the back pouch of the aircraft's journey log.  At my request and after explaining my quest and motivations, Alain graciously sent me everything that had survived from FAM's flying days - including the journey log, all documentation and the treasured data plate.

And so, on May 15th, 5 days after waking up with the odd feeling that this had to be done, I held in my hands everything that was left of my dad's beloved biplane. 

As I leafed through the weathered pages, I felt the familiar feeling one gets when the tail leaves the ground and the wings are buoyed by lift.

A smooth, almost imperceptible tug on the stick and we're climbing away again.