Today was a wonderful, clear, crisp November day, and we breathed our
fill of it. I had seven rides in a twenty-eight meter and one in a
twenty-three meter Nieuport. In life the things we look forward to
usually fall below our expectations, but not so in aviation. In
aviation, every experience so totally eclipses all expectations that you
realize you were totally incapable of imagination in that field. We
change planes five times in progressing from Penguin to Spad. Each
change is as great an advance and difference as stepping from a box car
to a locomobile limousine with Westinghouse shock absorbers.
The Nieuport is the plane we are using now, with a man to give the
scale. It has a supporting area of twenty-three square meters. It is the
fighting plane used at the Front seven or eight months ago.