Whoever knows me knows I have two great passions in life: photography and aviation. Both of them started early in my life, photography when I was 8 years old during a darkroom class at the elementary school and aviation with my first flight when I was turning 6 and my father, a private pilot, brought me up for my birthday.

A lot of water passed under the bridges since then and life decided photography had to become my job and aviation an hobby I had to dream about more than practicing it.

I tempted many times to bring the two passions together but I was able to do it just for a little while when I lived in Florida and you can see here a peak moment of that union. In Italy it’s not that simple and when the unexpected opportunity of last Sunday arrived I jumped on it.

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Sadly Italy is not offering the same opportunities in aviation. General Aviation in Italy was annihilated by years of excessive taxes, absurd bureaucracy and socialist rhetoric. The story of aviation in Italy was great at the beginning, the development of aviation was fast and strong around the World Ward One and arrived to the top in the later years. When Mussolini took power he understood the importance of aviation, as military power, civil infrastructure and propaganda machine.

Mussolini had put Italo Balbo in charge of aviation. He was a great pilot and had a real sense of the importance of aviation. Under his management Italy became a reference for pilots and the airplane industry. Italy achieved many record specially with seaplanes. The peak of the Italian achievements, and also of the fascist propaganda, was the Decennial Air Cruise. As described on Wikipedia: It was a mass transatlantic flight from Orbetello, Italy, to the Century of Progress International Exposition, in Chicago. The expedition, organized by the Italian Regia Aeronautica, began on July 1, 1933, and ended on August 12 of the same year. It consisted of 25 Savoia-Marchetti S.55X seaplanes crossing the Atlantic Ocean in formation, forming the greatest mass flight in aviation history. The Italian Squadrons, led by General Italo Balbo, were welcomed enthusiastically in the Netherlands, the UK, Iceland, Canada and particularly in the United States of America, where they became known as the Italian Air Armada. A publicity success for Fascist Italy, Balbo further viewed the expedition as a pioneering step towards commercial flights across the Atlantic.”

On Archive.org you can find a documentary video of the Cruise, a very interesting documentary showing the level reached by Italian aviation. Italo Balbo had to pay his opposition to the alliance with Hitler and the racial laws. He was a smart man not just a good aviator and, as usually happens under dictatorships, at the end he had to pay for his intelligence.

When finally the fascist regime collapsed we made the same mistake always made by every country when there is a drastic change in regime: we threw away the baby with the dirty water. Aviation was used as a symbol of greatness by the fascism and it was then used by the subsequent governments as a fascist symbol to be destroyed.

In the 1950s and 60s there was a try to revive aviation and some airports, mostly built and used by military during WWII, were converted to civil airports and flying school opened up.

Those were the times when my father got involved in aviation, got his private pilot and glider license and gave his contribute to aviation as president of the Aosta Aero Club.

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Few years later all started to go south. Too much taxes and complications made aviation slowly decline. Just to give you an example, when I was a kid the Cuneo AeroClub had 4 single engines, an aerobatic, a twin engine and a motor-glider, now there is not even more the Club.

I arrived in it too late, when I was 14 my father left his license expire, the main reasons were the costs and the fact that his work insurance decided to not pay anymore for accidents while piloting an airplane.

One of the sad part of the Italian aviation is seeing some excellence like Piaggio, Tecnam and other smaller companies dedicated to Light Sport airplanes, producing beautiful planes but with a very limited internal market. Some beautiful and unique airports as the Aosta Airport, a paradise for gliders, immersed in the Alps is still working but the numbers are 1/3 of what were in the 1960s. A real waste of potential. A common problem in Italy not just in the aviation sector.

I gave a try at a pilot license while I was living in Florida, but life decided differently and I had to re-enter Italy just before the final check-ride.

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I tried to reconnect with airplanes while in Italy but it was an absurd experience. Flight schools booking an hour with an instructor and the plane and instructor never showing up, snobbish people at local airfield wearing the Top Gun jackets and making the schedule for a flight on a Light Sport airplane more difficult than scheduling a meeting with the Pope, local airports become “international” and so not accessible for taking pictures and many similar experiences made me almost desist.

Finally a couple of weeks ago I asked on a Facebook Group some information about the local airfield in Envie. I wanted to visit it because I read was the base for some home builders and I figured could be a nice subject to test the Pentax K1 mkII I’m reviewing for Fowa, the Pentax Italian importer. I had zero answers from pilots at the Envie airfield, and when I went to take a look I saw basically a desert field with a decadent farm, but I had an answer from Sergio, a pilot based at the Castelletto Stura airfield, who invited me there.

It was a wonderful surprise and we organized for a Sunday morning.

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The airfield in Castelletto Stura is what an airfield is supposed to be and I found the same spirit common in American airfields: passionate people in love for their airplanes and happy to share their passion looking at the visitors from the same flight level and not from 30,000 feet above as is custom in nearby airfields.

Sergio took out his Tecnam P2002, called in some friends and the field owner arrived to bring out his autogyro and at the end Sergio was so kind to bring me up for a little flight.

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The weather was perfect and I met great people while finally breathing some aviation again while pictures with the great Pentax K1. A perfect Sunday morning.

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