Today started out very foggy, because there was no wind. We stood in the
field till one o’clock waiting for the air to clear. I got a machine by
four. The next hour contained enough excitement to do for the day. The
planes are like mad little Indian ponies turned loose in the field—or,
better still, like Pegasus bound into the air with a spirit that must be
tamed by steady nerves and gentle hand. It is hard to describe just the
feeling which possesses one. We are taught the principles and the
movements that control the machine and then we are sent alone into the
air to find an understanding of them. Perhaps you are turning a corner
at an angle of forty-five degrees on the bank. Suddenly you feel
something is wrong. The wind whistles louder than usual. Is it because
you are pointing nose down, or are you sliding out over the rim of the
curve, or down into the center of it? It is one of the three, and to
correct the wrong one is to make worse the other two, yet the correction
must be made. Now it is too late to figure it out, so you just correct
it without thinking, and wonder which fault it was. In an animal we call
it instinct, but there is an instant there which, when it passes, leaves
a vacuum in the nervous system. The machine climbs like a tiger, and as
we are not yet permitted to cut down the gas, it takes much strength to
hold its nose down. I made fifteen five-minute rides, and now I’m
pleasantly tired and relaxed.
I had ten rides in the eighteen-meter Nieuport and am getting the run of
it. It is one of the most difficult machines to drive. I had bad luck in
motors or would have finished today. My motor stopped twice when I was
twenty-five meters from the ground, but I landed without mishap. With
these machines the wing area is so small you head almost straight for
the ground and just straighten out in time to land. You make a tour of
five or six miles and mount a thousand feet into the air in five
minutes—but you will be tired of reading this sort of thing very soon.
The thing to do is to go to some aviation field and see it all done.
One of father’s letters arrived with a lot of clippings in it. Those
clippings are very interesting. I enjoy them much more than the papers.
The _Saturday Evening Post_ is read from cover to cover and passed about
till the pages are thin, so it would fill a big demand. Another book on
aviation came. I have not yet had time to finish the first one. As they
go into the technical end of things rather deeply, I can only study a
small amount at a time. Most of my reading lately has been history.