Fleet Finch

The classic WW II Canadian trainer

- MIKE DAVENPORT

In 2019, I went to the EAA's AirVenture fly-in in Wisconsin for just the second time. The first was back in the ’80s when I flew there in a friend’s Piper Arrow. This year I took my Stinson instead. But this is not about the trip but about one of the planes that really caught my eye.

I clearly have a thing about old airplanes; after all, like me, mine is over 70. But what caught my eye was a beautifully restored Fleet Finch 16B powered by a 5-cylinder 160 hp Kinner engine. And I love the sound of that fine old engine.

The first time that I sat behind a Kinner engine was in a Ryan PT22. It was one of those great summer days when everything goes just right. There I was in the front seat of an open cockpit airplane while the pilot in the back seat looped and rolled all over the sky. The five cylinders of the Kinner just sort of popped away and blew smoke and bits of oil in my face, but who cared?

Years later in the summer of 2000, it was a different Kinner, but the sound was the same, the air smelled great, the view was different this time through the wings of a biplane and once again I’m having a ball. I’m the pilot this time in the front seat of a 1941 Fleet Finch II/16B biplane. Yes, the front seat; the Finch is flown from the front seat, unlike the Tiger Moth or Stearman that are flown from the rear. This gives a much better view of the ground in the immediate area around the nose than some others.

Aerobatic trainer