I was 8 years old when the giovane Canta**, with Luci, entered the Sayo for the first time.
My father at the time was advertising in a modeling magazine and he showed up, asking if that was the hotel for model airplane builders, on tiptoe, which was strange of him.
The model lab was a small room next to a storage room but for him it was perfect. From then on, not a single summer was missing. Every August, for the whole month and even longer, as well as several scattered weekends, he was in our laboratory tinkering and on the slopes flying.
I was telling Beppe G., during the funeral, that I have no memories of being a child on the slopes, in the summer, without Stefano's presence. Every day I went down to the laboratory and he was there to give me a hand to build, or rather to patch up, my attempts at construction. He set the radio for me, asked me if I had charged the batteries, which of course I hadn't done, and helped me with all the things needed to go up a hill. Then we would set off, I remember in particular a blue BMW station wagon, with briar root interiors and the album Blue's by Fornaciari. At the time we always went to Stella d'Italia, we didn't need a jeep.
He saw me grow up, over the years he never spared me one but I never limited myself either. He did it with a benevolent spirit, but I always took it personally, as a teenager, imagine that. Only after several years did I understand.
This year I turn forty years old and if I think that for thirty-two he always encouraged me, even in a bad way, it really annoys me to think of not being able to show him the Sayonara that will come, the one he always mentioned everywhere. He probably considered it partly his, because in the end, he felt like at home with us.
There are so many people who have met, built relationships, shared experiences at our hotel, thanks to him. Always ready to give advice and explain things that were basic for us to the unaware tourist, who stopped him as he passed by the bar like a locomotive, heading to the restaurant, with a wing or a fuselage in his hand.
He was always late to eat, when he did eat; we had to call him a thousand times and then another, in the end our mother would come down, whom he obviously obeyed. Sometimes the food would be brought directly to the laboratory but when the light bulb came on, he would rush up to explain the idea to the other modelers in the dining room. It didn't matter how inappropriate the moment or the obstacle to my sisters who were serving and who obviously had to adapt to the situation, he had to reach Beppe, Alberto or whoever to explain his intuition to them. Many customers looked at him askance, they didn't understand this giant man, with his cyan-stained shirt and the cheerful eyes of an Italian on a trip, as Paolo Conte would say.
But when, to those same customers who asked me for information on him, I told them about him, about what he did in life, about his oddities and virtues, they immediately took a liking to him. If he happened to be passing by at that moment and I introduced him, everything flowed by itself.
In the evening he would lie down on the sofas in the bar, always assuming a pose halfway between a hedonist and a tramp and speaking with a low tone, forged by years of smoking. I was a kid but I remember that in the laboratory he would grind up packets of unfiltered nationals cigarettes, after the first cardiac warning he stopped but, lately, he had the cigar thing that stinked everything up. I called him a mona (moron) every time, he told me he was spoiled, that he couldn't change.
While I was closing the bar, he was there, waiting for the resin to dry and he explained the world to me, I pretended I already knew the world, and he knew, so he explained it to me anyway. If the resin took a long time, he came down and let me close. At night Stefano didn't go to sleep, too much to do, he went to bed when Willi opened in the morning, they crossed paths and greeted each other as if at a changing of the guard. He came down again at midday to prepare what was necessary to go up the slope, with me.
I have pages to write about it, about how Stefano Cantadori lived in our house, who called himself Manubrio, because Volante seemed excessive.
He will be so missed, by all. When someone who cannot have a replacement leaves, the hole remains and we can only go around it.
* It's a play on words, "volante" in italian can be steering wheel or aviator (literally the guy that is flying), so he defines himself as "Manubrio" the handlebar of the bike because he is too humble to call himself Volante
**giovane means young, Cantadori was not young anymore, but everybody kept calling him this way
The Story of the Giallone "Big yellow"
So, dear reader,
if you do not know the Giallone, I forgive you. However, I invite you not to commit sacrilege by approaching with an impure mind.
Therefore, clear your mind of bad thoughts, purify the air with pine branches, pour water and burn fires.
This airplane is a marvel of the Simeoni family, of the rock of the Sciliar, of a fragment of the Marmolada glacier, of the wind that sculpts the rocks of the Sacro Monte (Sacred Mountain). The fuselage transformed from ice into sparkling diamond and finally into glass woven by Elves. No other wings were made with the same wood, an aquatic essence peeled from a trunk that had sailed the Ganges. According to less accredited sources, the Yangtze, the Yellow River.
The wings were made of white polystyrene feathers. No spar, no fiber. Very light. Yet it was one of the most extraordinary aerobatics that ever soared the sky.
No one has ever seen those wings flex and flutter was unknown to it. I can say I own some gliders with high load, others with excessive load, gliders with explosive load, gliders so loaded they would try with a hibernating bear, gliders with fuselage and wings stuffed with uranium 238. But the Giallone was in a class of its own.
The Giallone had a wing load equal to the pita, the angiolino, the pingargnone, and the ace of cups, plus jack, knight, and king, all in the same hand. It weighed like a stove with the master builder inside, his apprentice, and my toolbox.
The fuselage was indeed so massive that it seemed to be made of solid cast iron.
In some alpine places, weight is still expressed in G. It is said, exaggerating: my tractor weighs 0.75 Gialloni.
Do not think, you who are ignorant, that for this reason the Giallone was anything less than graceful. The initiate well knows of the graceful snout, the arched nose, its silver canopy; Michelangelesque beauty, quiet triumph of darting strength.
It had respect and was respected by other animals. After a touch-and-go on the back of a bull, it landed in the middle of the herd. There was no problem recovering the model: the hundred bulls immediately cleared the slope. Few are the inferior minds that can withstand the gaze of the Giallone.
For your instruction and guidance, here are some quotes from the vast literature on the subject:
Ghisleri, in his treatise “Flight Experiences Beyond the Possible” asserts that in inverted flight the Giallone accelerated.
Tarter took care of its maintenance. Only he, by right, was entitled to such an honor. On the Giallone, Tarter said, you could not use the Dremel: it was necessary to intervene with the flexible.
Ghisleri writes again:
“For its restoration, carried out 3 years ago by Tarter, due to its historical value for the mountain community and the scope of the work, it was necessary to request a building permit from the Municipality of Folgaria, as reported, according to law, on its directional”.
And again, in response to a reckless person who had confused the Giallone with the MantaRay:
“Let’s be careful not to confuse yellow models with the Giallone, I love my Manta very much, which is only partially yellow. Once I even kissed it after a particularly satisfying flight but, as the commandments of the Sacro Monte say:
You shall have no other Giallone besides me”.
Tarter, as a sign of respect, said that in our correspondence there should always be a reference to the Giallone, for example: “this model flies almost with the grace and elegance of the Giallone”.
The youngest scion of the Simeoni family, son of a Flying god, asked me at a gathering for permission to look at the Giallone up close. I nodded, confused.
Such is now His legend.
Technically speaking, the Giallone was a canker.
In a dive, the model did not whistle: it roared.
When passing under a slope, it moved the air with a dull noise, you felt it coming at you like a warm wind, energy transformed into flight. With a mysterious and wavering center of gravity, during the period when I tended to move the balance of all my models backward, I discovered that the Giallone maintained the same inevitable warp cruising speed even by removing half a kilo from the nose. It simply shifted from a downforce plane to a lift plane. The trim reversed relative to the zero point for a given angle of attack. Almost free flight. The Giallone was and is, free.
Meazza – and I mean Dimitri Meazza – during a celebratory flight, handed me back the radio saying, with a worried face, that he could not understand that model. Indeed, it could have non-Newtonian behaviors, yet never became unstable. On the contrary, it always advanced confidently and majestically like Garibaldi crossing Sicily. It commanded respect, that’s for sure. The Giallone emanated a kind of fluid. It certainly reasoned on its own and was endowed with free will. Sometimes in a climb, it inexplicably increased speed. I think it did it for fun.
The thermals obeyed it, and they pushed it upwards with combined forces. They loved it. Despite its density of a dwarf star, it inexplicably never had problems gaining altitude. It ran through the sky like a master, like a locomotive in full swing, dragging its wings spread at a high angle of attack and easily signaling any suspicion of warm air.
It took possession of it, as only great birds of prey know how to do, climbing effortlessly. For aerobatics, it demanded so many notches to dive that they had to be inserted with a switch, and then in a dive, it traced straight lines like a sword, a flaming arrow; in that attitude, in crosswinds, it increased its already mighty speed by just a sigh. Even so, sometimes it only needed a wide turn over the entire valley to see it gather and hurl the air beneath it, raise its nose, and climb aggressively until it reached the clouds: you just had to let it do it. It required from its co-pilot (the real pilot was Itself) only one courtesy: constant attention with the ailerons; if one wing sipped a drop of thermal more than the other, it could easily reverse the direction of the turn. It felt the air, smelled it, let itself be carried by it, it was its element.
The laws of motion its companions, it could plunge from the top of the Mountain down below the launch altitude for another 800 meters to finally position itself vertically with a gentle pull of the elevator. It then shot upwards like a missile, up, up, ever higher without slowing down, an inexhaustible reservoir of energy. You had to take it out of that attitude to avoid losing it. Pointed towards the abyss in the non-lifting zone, it could perform, showing you its rear as per the manual, the entire Great Caviccio, confident that at the end of the figure with a twisted pig’s tail finish, it would rise again thanks to its inexorable inertia.
The fuselage was that of a Libelle, internally marked Willy Kleindst, a mythological being. It seems that the mold came from the same master from which the great Marzocchi had made his Libelle. The profile was a modified KW, unique and unrepeatable. The back was almost a Ritz 3, the underside was shaped with a slipper in the manner of curvilinears. That profile was finally modified for the Giallone by Luca Simeoni who, inspired by a wine, on a yellow day, fused it into those wings. In a previous incarnation, the Giallone had been a 3.75 Libelle with Ritz 2-30-12 profiles. When it grew up, it shortened its sleeves and thanks to a second bayonet holder, it wore the wing plan of the Swift, of which little was still known. Oh, one day I will tell you about the first time I saw it in flight, piloted by the skilled hands of a young Luca Simeoni with his first beard, a frightening thrill, thunder in the sky, elegant projectile. Luca Simeoni and Alberto Tarter flew in tandem that day; it was the first time I saw real aerobatics in the Alps. Since then, I never went on vacation to the sea again.
We once took it to Cucco as an ambassador of Trentino, along with an equally traditional pine branch; it was displayed discreetly, in a remote and fenced corner, so as not to disturb it. The Giallone had a certain character, a real bear, it did not like crowds and was also touchy.
That day the StingRays were flying, but for the Giallone there were not enough conditions. Besides, the wind had always bothered it. Its element was the powerful thermal of the Alps and it flew by magic. When it wanted to, it let you know.
On that afternoon of black clouds at the Sacro Monte, the arrival of the Giallone from the Garda side was announced from afar, like a wink of light at the end of a tunnel. It turned, following the side of Eolo’s road, where the wind, accelerated by the hot rocks, rises the tooth of the forts. It is there that the thermal creates the cumulus clouds and drags the gliders with it, creaking under the powerful push. A hurricane itself, the Giallone did not care about flying in that sky that was getting darker and darker, the clouds lower and lower. That year, when I had not been able to frequent the slopes, that flight was my redemption.
It entered that black cloud in the moving sky, and with my poor eyes, I did not see it come out again. I made all the mistakes that lack of hours leads you to make. I shouldn’t have, but I got everything wrong.
It dug its hole among those of the Italian howitzers of 15-18, in the middle of the large meadow.
The Giallone lived with Willy, up in Folgaria, in a special room at the Hotel Sayonara, with a warning sign on the door: All'occhio: Giallone.
Today, having ended its flying career, it has moved to the laboratory in the form of an aeronautical sculpture, composed by that family of artists. When I manage to get up there, enjoying a small glass of thinner together, I like to talk with it about the old times and what is to come.
Stefano “Manubrio” Cantadori
In this picture, Stefano "Manubio" Cantadori with Flavio Rella (Founder with Willi and Marco Cuel of the Model Aeroclub of Folgaria)