First Flight

I made my first flight on 1st January 1958 with instructor Charles Sandoz from Lausanne Blécherette's grass strip in a Piper Cub. He dictated my first logbook entry: "Début de l'écolage. Pris connaissance de l'avion."
The flight lasted the four minutes of the circuit.
HB-ONM was one of the Piper L4's sold to the clubs for Fr. 3000.- by the Swiss Air Force.
On page 5 my first logbook shows the instructor's handwriting in "Enfin, bravo, mieux! Avec mon meilleur souvenir votre instructeur, Sandoz Chs."

Then I moved to Zürich, continuing at Kloten with Heiri Heller as instructor. I soloed in a Piper Cub on 30th August 1958 with a total of 10 hours and 23 minutes.

I was 27 years old when I took my first flying lesson. 35 years later, when asked about what triggered my decision to earn my wings, I must have made a bad impression because my reply was honest. Then and now, I am unable to romanticise the motive that made me go see a flying instructor in the first place. There's no metaphysical background, no wanting to escape the drab earthly environment, no visionary start of an airman's career. I simply learned to fly because of the heroes in Hollywood's B - movies we youngsters went to see. When confronted with an airplane those daredevils would reassuringly just sit in the old tail dragger, turn on the switch (keys are always in place in parked American cars and planes) and take off into the wild blue yonder with his object of admiration. Silly, isn't it?

Of course, at that age I thought flying was moving a control stick or wheel in four directions period.
What really kept me going on later was the fascination of learning the basics from so many different areas of knowledge. There was the meteorology, the aerodynamics, the mechanics of combustion engines, geography, navigation, electronics, communication procedures, legislation, even history.
I know of no field of human endeavour where knowledge of such a variety comes together.

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