Escape Velocity

"Oscar-Zulu - Wilson Tower," a faraway voice crackled in his headset, "you may begin your manoeuvres at your discretion."
High above the stout tower building, white wings circled lazily overhead like a giant vulture drifting in rising columns of Savannah air.
"Roger, Tower," came the reply over the radio.
The right hand moves smoothly forward, taking the control column with it as the left hand comes back slightly on the throttle.  The whisper of the slipstream sliding by the long canopy builds its breath to a dull moan.  On the instrument panel, one needle creeps up as another unwinds madly.  Suddenly, the sunlight streaming into the cockpit is eclipsed by shadow. 
Eyes turn upwards, a smile creases sunburned skin.
A cloud - as soft and pure as driven snow.
"Beautiful," says the pilot. 
A rattle passes through the airframe.
The pilot mutters an airspeed, barely audible over the hum of the engine and the rising crescendo of the slipstream.
Then, a smooth pull on the stick, wings flexing and the earth falls away underneath the propeller's disc.
Arms heavy, that intoxicating feeling in the pit of the stomach...and Oscar-Zulu bounds upwards with vigour and grace.
Up, up and up - lean on the right rudder as the sound of the slipstream fades and gravity begins to excise its inevitable toll.  The RF-5 continues its upwards arc, cresting the top where up is down and down is up, and the pilot feels light in his seat and in his heart.
A quick glance down reveals the billowing top of the cloud...and Wilson Airport below and beyond.
Now, sweeping elegantly down the arc's reverse, the engine's hum grows to a moan, life returns to the stick, both man and machine brace as they hurtle downwards.
The needles do their familiar dance.
A rush of speed and Oscar-Zulu sweeps under the cloud's skirt and out the other end, clawing skywards in a vertical climb.
As the craft hurtles upwards, the pilot falls victim to the dream that perhaps they will never stop accelerating, never stop climbing.
Maybe, just maybe and only this once, they might reach escape velocity and break the bonds of gravity.
Alas, not yet and not this time.  The airspeed begins to decay.  The breath of the slipstream fades.  A more absolute silence has never been heard.  There is a mechanical clap as the pilot's left foot moves the rudder pedal to full deflection.  Some 20 feet behind him, the rudder responds and the nose is forced left through the pivot.  Muscle memory faithfully applies opposite aileron to hold the wing down and Oscar-Zulu slices cleanly through the horizon.
As the aviator hangs in his straps, once again falling towards earth, the flanks of the cloud slide by only inches above his head...the wispy tendrils caressing the aircraft's wooden frame.

The day is December 14th, 1972.  My father has fallen madly in love with aerobatics.  The notation in his logbook: "21 - loop, stall turn, chandelle."

The front cover and first page of my dad's copy of 5Y-AOZ's pilot'soperating handbook.  (Family Collection)

The very next afternoon, my dad returns to the airport and calls on "Biff" Hamilton and his Chipmunk.

A dozen flights would follow in Chipmunk KLY, Beagle Pup AKG and Cessna 150 Aerobat ARG.  The notations in his logbook provide a poor picture of the joy these flights inspired.

The pages of my dad's logbook from December '72 and January '73. (Family Collection)

In September 1983, two months before I was born, "Biff" Hamilton won the intermediate category in an aerobatics competition at the Gatineau Airport.
It is very likely that my dad was at that meet as a spectator.
An Ottawa Citizen reporter named Doug Kelly interviewed Hamilton after his win.  Hamilton called aerobatics "the purest form of flying."
"Some people play golf for their kicks, I fly aerobatics," Hamilton is quoted as saying.  "Does that seem so odd?"
At the time, "Biff" had left the African plains for his home in Stratford.  He told Kelly he had learned to fly 40 years ago.
"Biff" would be nearing 90 now.
5Y-KLY ended up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as VP-WEV in the early 1980s.  It then surfaced some time later in South Africa under the registration ZS-VYU.  In 2005, it was acquired by a preservation organisation.

EX RAF WG-315, 5Y-KLY, & VP-WEV now registered as ZS-VYU.  The aircraft is pictured at Rand Airport in Germiston, South Africa (Photo Courtesy S. Geer)

A newspaper article reporting the emergency landing of 5Y-AOZ near Wilson.  Wilken CFI Alan Coulson is crouching by the nose gear. The Fournier is incorrectly identified as a "Cessna". (Family Collection)

5Y-AOZ met a crueler fate.  She was sold to an owner in Germany as D-KCIQ before being registered in the UK as G-BDOZ in December of 1975. 

G-BDOZ at Leicester, UK on July 5th, 1981 - less than 2 months later, it would be destroyed.  (Photo Courtesy: Dave Mangham)

And then on August 30th, 1981, during take-off from Fenland Aerodrome, Holbeach St. Johns, Lincolnshire with pilot and passenger on board, Oscar-Zulu dropped a wing, descended sharply and struck the ground, tearing off the right wing and cartwheeling to its destruction.
The pilot was hurt.  His passenger escaped injury.
The post-crash investigation revealed no mechanical reason for the crash.  The investigators concluded that, during the right turn following departure, the aircraft passed over a field of burning pea stubble.  They believed the thermal instability caused by the burning brush may have led to the crash.
The insurance company sold the wreck to a chap in High Wycombe who stripped out the avionics the sold the rest to a J. Hassell.  Mr. Hassell wanted to rebuild the RF-5 but, in his words, "ran out of money and inclination."  In 1982, he sold "Oscar-Zulu's" carcass to a man at Southend Airport who broke it up for spare parts.
AKG and ARG have faded from memory.  They now live only in the sinews and synapses of those pilots lucky enough to have flung them about the sky with skill and abandon.
Aerobatics, however, is alive and well...and is perhaps, my father's most enduring gift to me.

Intermission 1

In the early 1950s, the skies over Europe had been quiet and free of bloodshed for several years.  The Commonwealth no longer had such a desperate need for eager young men to bravely take to the skies in defense of life and liberty.  Airfields across the United Kingdom were clogged with Dehavilland DHC-1 Chipmunk trainers...and the Royal Air Force decided to get rid of them.
The famed trainers, the mounts upon which post-war aviators had cut their teeth less than a decade ago, were scattered to the winds...an aviation diaspora.
A dozen found their way to Kenya.  At Wilson Airport, the Aero Club of East Africa saw the demobbed British aircraft as cheap and readily available alternatives to new trainers.  The Aero Club bought at least three.  It may have purchased as many as six.

Chipmunk VP-KLW (before change over to 5Y) at Wilson Airport on March 11th, 1956. (Photo Courtesy: Joe Barr)

Chipmunk 5Y-KLS equipped with the rudder from sister ship KLW captured at Wilson in August 1971. (Photo Courtesy: Dave Welch)

With the "new" airplanes, came at least one heart-sick aviator looking for a job and a chance to keep flying his beloved "Chippie."
On September 12th, 1947, Flight Lieutenant J.N. "Biff" Hamilton relinquished his Queen's commission in the Royal Air Force.  He had served as an instructor pilot and was old enough to have served during the second world war.
In June 1972, "Biff" Hamilton would have been 49 or 50 years old. Now a flight instructor at the Aero Club of East Africa, the Canadian was far from home but happy to be playing with the airplanes he knew so well.
Across the ramp at Wilken Aviation, my father was growing tired of the Cherokee 140.  So tired in fact, that he had been tinkering in a hangar for some time building, of all things, an airplane.  His intent was to fly it north to San Giacomo and land on a patch of grass carved into the sunflower choked fields of his hometown.  He would return home sooner than he thought.
To keep his hand in flying, he ventured across the ramp to the Aero Club and its small fleet of ex-military trainers. He did 5 flights under the greenhouse canopy of Chipmunk 5Y-KLY with "Biff" riding in the back. 
And then, on June 27th, one day after his 5th flight in the Chipmunk, my grandfather died.
Instead of returning home a conqueror atop the aircraft he had built, my father bought a plane ticket to Rome and rented a car.  Then he made the lonely three hour drive east to mourn.
When he returned in September, a little older and still grieving, not much had changed at Wilson.
"Biff" was still at it.
The Chipmunks sat in a neat little row, their highly polished aluminium skin simmering in the heat and shimmering in the golden sunlight...beckoning.
However, another siren's song soared higher.
In my dad's absence, Wilken had acquired a brand new Sportavia RF-5.

RF-5 5Y-AOZ in March 1974 at Wilson.  (Photo Courtesy: Terry Murphy)

The RF-5 was a light sport motor glider.  In layman's terms, the pilot could take off and fly under the power of the engine but, due to the aircraft's glider pedigree, had the option of shutting down the engine and gliding to earth.
Over the next few weeks, my dad learned to fly the unique craft with gorgeous lines...finding unconditional comfort and promise in its gull-like grace.