Father to Son

My father, Oliver LeCompte, climbing out of his plane, 

sectionals in hand.

I don’t remember my first ride in an airplane. I was too young—probably four, maybe five years old. But I’m pretty sure I know in what plane I was riding: November Six-Six-Six-One Papa, my father’s Piper Comanche 250. My father bought the plane new in 1960 for $23,000, got his private pilot’s license, and owned and flew it for 30 years until emphysema robbed him of his breath and his ability to fly.

     Though he never got his instrument rating, my father flew Six-One-Pop everywhere—from our home in Colorado Springs to the West Coast, the Baja Peninsula, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, South America and the East. Really, to a lot more variety of places than I’ve flown in my 30 years of flying.

     I admire my father for his shear audaciousness in flying to these places without an IFR rating, flying using pilotage in an era before GPS, and when a lot of places didn’t have many VORs or reliable fuel and much less reliable weather forecasting.

   And ironically, perhaps because he never got an instrument ticket, what I remember most about flying with my father are not all the places we flew to, but the places we got stuck waiting out the weather—sometimes for days: San Diego, Douglas, Arizona, Hermosillo, Mexico, and St. Louis.

   Though I’ve always loved airplanes, I can’t really say that I loved flying with my dad. He was an extremely cautious and tense pilot. Also, I was prone to air sickness as a kid, and being the next to youngest meant I always had to sit in the back seat. Given the high altitudes my father nearly always flew, I was huddled under parkas and blankets trying to stay warm while gripping a Sic-Sac.

     I didn’t learn to fly until my thirties, inspired less by my father than by an addiction to Microsoft Flight Simulator. After getting my private license in 1994, I went in on a partnership on a 1968 Cherokee 180, a great little plane that I went on to get my instrument rating and in which I flew for 10 years, taking it everywhere from my home on the East Coast to Florida, Texas, the West Coast, the Midwest and Canada.

      On our second date, I took my wife on an aerial tour of Plum Island and the northern coast of Massachusetts, a sign of real trust in someone considering I don’t think she knew my last name at that point. We’ve been together now for 19 years, so I’d like to think that her trust in me was well-placed.

       My father flew with me only a handful of times. On one of our last flights before he died, I took him down the Hudson River Corridor. As I pointed out landmarks in the city in which he grew up, he kept checking the gauges and fiddling with the radios, oblivious to the magnificent skyline sliding past his window and unable to let go of his old cockpit habits.

     In 2009, I bought my first Comanche. My outward goal was to find a four-place complex single that was fast and reasonably economical—something the Comanche satisfies quite nicely. But I now realize that part of me was looking to reconnect with my childhood. As such, my judgment may have been clouded. Practically from the moment I handed over the check, the plane started having problems. After a multitude of mechanical problems, a wheelbarrow full of money and a couple of scary incidents I started calling the plane “Christine” after the haunted car from the Stephen King novel. Eventually, I decided I had to sell it. A mechanic friend and Comanche specialist in Texas agreed to broker the aircraft. So I planned what would be my last flight in the plane.

      Though my intention was to first sell the plane before buying another, I compulsively kept checking the classifieds. On the eve of my departure to Texas, I asked my mechanic/broker if he’d help me when it came time to buying a plane. “Of course,” he said. “Have you found anything, in particular.”

      Well… there is this one Comanche, I told him. It’s a 1962 model, born a 180, but the owner later upgraded the engine to a 250 hp.  In addition to 60 gallons in the main wing tanks it has tip tanks, bringing the total fuel to 90 gallons

  “Really? What’s the tail number?”

  November-Seven-Seven-Niner-One-Papa.

   “I’ll be darned. I took care of that plane for 10 years. Sold it for the owner to a doctor in Indiana.”

    And so my itinerary to Texas included a stop in Indiana to look at Niner-One Papa. A week later, Cliff Wilewski of Heritage Aero in Rockford, Ill., flew out to do the prepurchase, and not long after that the plane was tied down at my home airport in eastern Massachusetts.

   In the 10 years since, Niner-One-Papa has performed almost flawlessly. I have flown it to the West Coast and Southwest, annually to Oshkosh, to Texas and all over New England—including numerous volunteer flights for Angel Flight and Lighthawk. I’ve landed the plane on the ice runway at Alton Bay on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, and taken up formation flying after attending a clinic with the Bonanzas to Oshkosh organization. As much as my first Comanche seemed snakebitten, this plane seems charmed. This plane I intend to keep.

    Eight years ago, I upgraded the instrument panel, installing an Aspen PFD and Garmin GTN 750, which together with the already installed STEC 55X autopilot made the plane a truly modern aircraft, one capable of doing things my father’s Comanche never really could. Four years ago, I had the plane repainted in the factory scheme that my father’s plane sported, only I opted for red on white colors rather than my father’s garish blue on yellow scheme.

   Dad’s plane, N6661P, lives on, but only in memory. In 2012, during a flight from Kansas, the plane landed short of the runway on final approach into Meadowlake Airfield in Colorado Springs. No one was seriously injured. The pilot told investigators that during the flight the plane started picking up ice. He decided to continue to his destination. He actually should have made it, but on final he failed to keep his airspeed up and stalled short of the runway. The plane was a total loss. A local salvage yard put up photos of the dismantled machine then being sold for parts.

    I sometimes regret that my father can’t fly with me in Niner-One-Papa. I would’ve liked for him to experience what it’s like to fly in actual IMC using a modern GPS and a good autopilot. Would he be impressed? Would he think I’m spoiled? Probably both. But that’s my dad. On the other hand, I’m sure he’d find my plane in many ways is just like his plane, which of course it is. And for the same reason, a part of me will always feel he’s flying with me.

Final resting place of Dad's plane, Six One Pop.

Niner-One-Pop, sporting the same factory scheme 

as my father’s plane.