My first experience, a bit exciting, came rather early. On my second
solo flight when I was half way around and going with the wind at a
height of one hundred meters the motor stopped. That is about as bad as
can happen at such a height for a student. The minute your motor stops
you have to peak at thirty degrees and land into the wind. When my motor
stopped, I looked for a landing, and peaked. The landing was a little
behind me, so I made a short turn with a steep bank and managed to
straighten her out just in time for a bare landing. It is very difficult
to turn and bank with a dead motor, and I feel rather elated; and the
best of it was that I was not frightened or worried in the least. It all
went just as easily and naturally as I believed it would when I took up
aviation. The great problem is not to lose speed, you know. In the
Nieuport hangars they hang a motto: “Loss of speed is death.” Well, the
field I had landed in was a bit rough and weedy, but there was a smooth,
long stretch adjacent, so I decided to try to get her out myself. You
see, the engines we use are Gnome rotary, an archaic type, and very
impractical. At the field men hold the machine while the mechanic
adjusts the carbureter, and then at a given signal it is released and
soars skyward. The charm is that when shut off it won’t start again till
you prime it, and the mechanic adjusts the carbureter over again for
full speed. Well, a Ford was just passing, and they stopped and waited
to see what I’d do. I went over and got a can from them to prime the
engine with gas, then I cranked the thing and when it started up it darn
near ran away with the poor scared man before I could get to the seat,
so then I taxied the “girl” up to the far end of the field and wheeled
her around. It takes two hundred yards to get to twenty feet height. I
had three hundred yards to adjust the carbureter in and clear a row of
trees thirty feet high, into the wind, of course. Well, they had
explained the thing to us, and I had watched the mechanics, so I gave it
to her and didn’t look up till I got the engine going. By that time the
trees were one hundred yards ahead. She rose a little and I kept her low
till she gained speed, and twenty-five yards from the trees I pulled her
up and she fairly bounded over the road. I made an “S” curve and just
got over the field at the school when the engine died again, and I came
down by the bunch with a cylinder burned out.
_November 15, 1917._