One of the interesting facts bearing on the life of aviators is that they rarely lose track of one another permanently. Distance means little to the pilot, and there is always someone dropping in from somewhere who knows all the various flyers in his section of the country, and who is willing to sit down and do a little “ground flying” with the local pilots. In this way intimate contact is continually established throughout the clan. (“Ground flying” is the term used to designate the exchange of flying experiences among airmen.)
I had not soloed up to the time I bought my Jenny at Americus, although at that time the fact was strictly confidential.
After my training at Lincoln I had not been able to furnish the required bond and, although I had done a little flying on cross country trips with Bahl and Lynch, I had never been up in a plane alone. Therefore when my Jenny was completely assembled and ready to fly I was undecided as to the best method of procedure. No one on the field knew that I had never soloed. I had not been in a plane for six months; but I did not have sufficient money to pay for more instruction, so one day I taxied to one end of the field, opened the throttle and started to take off. When the plane was about four feet off the ground, the right wing began to drop, so I decided that it was time to make a landing. I accomplished this on one wheel and one wing skid but without doing any damage to the ship. I noticed that the wind was blowing hard and suddenly decided that I would wait for calmer weather before making any more flights and taxied back to the hangar.
A pilot who was waiting for delivery on one of the Jennies offered to give me a little dual instruction, and I flew around with him for thirty minutes and made several landings. At the end of this time he taxied up to the line and told me that I would have no trouble and was only a little rusty from not flying recently. He advised me to wait until evening when the air was smooth and then to make a few solo flights.
When evening came I taxied out from the line, took one last look at the instruments and took off on my first solo.
The first solo flight is one of the events in a pilot’s life which forever remains impressed on his memory. It is the culmination of difficult hours of instruction, hard weeks of training and often years of anticipation. To be absolutely alone for the first time in the cockpit of a plane hundreds of feet above the ground is an experience never to be forgotten.
After a week of practice flights around Southern Field I rolled my equipment and a few spare parts up in a blanket, lashed them in the front cockpit and took off for Minnesota.
This was my first cross country flight alone, less than a week after my solo hop. Altogether I had less than five hours of solo time to my credit. I had, however, obtained invaluable experience the year before while flying around in the western states with Biffle, Bahl, and Lynch.
While learning to fly in Nebraska the previous spring, I discovered that nearly every pilot in existence had flown in Texas at one time or another during his flying career. Accordingly I decided that, at the first opportunity I would fly to Texas myself and although I travelled a rather roundabout way from Georgia to Minnesota, my course passed through Texarkana en route.
The first hop was from Americus to Montgomery, Alabama, and passed over some fairly rough territory of which both Georgia and Alabama have their share.
I had been warned before leaving the field, that the airline course to Texas was over some of the “worst flying country in the south” and had been advised to take either a northern course directly to Minnesota or to follow the Gulf of Mexico. This advice served to create a desire to find out what the “worst flying country in the south” looked like. I had a great deal of confidence in my Jenny with its powerful OX-5 engine, and it seemed absurd to me at that time to detour by airplane. Consequently I laid my route in the most direct line possible to conform with my limited cruising range with forty gallons of fuel.
The flight to Montgomery was uneventful. I landed at the army field there before noon, filled the fuel tanks and took off again for Meridian, Mississippi.
I arrived over Meridian in late afternoon and for the first time was faced with the problem of finding a suitable field and landing in it.
An experienced pilot can see at a glance nearly everything necessary to know about a landing field. He can tell its size, the condition of the ground, height of grass or weeds, whether there are any rocks, holes, posts or ditches in the way, if the land is rough and rolling or flat and smooth; in short whether the field is suitable to land in or if it would be advisable to look for another and better one. In fact, the success of a barnstorming pilot of the old days was measured to a large extent by his artfulness in the choice of fields from which to operate. Often, in case of motor failure, the safety of his passengers, himself, and his ship depended upon his alertness in choosing the best available landing place and his ability in maneuvering the plane into it. If his motor failure was only partial or at high altitude, time was not so essential, as a plane can glide a great distance, either with a motor which only “revs” down a couple of hundred rpm or without any assistance from the engine
