I had
to hang onto the iron bars in the cockpit and the blood all went to
the top of your head. You would nearly pass out doing that one. He
also showed me how to fly backwards. On a windy day you would slow
the airplane down so it would just stay up and the wind would blow
you backwards. You could look down and see the fields and buildings
all going in the opposite direction.
One night we had to fly a triangle cross country course of about one
hours time. We had not done much flying at night and we took off at
intervals and started out all alone towards the first check point. I
missed the first checkpoint and finally realized I was lost. I didn't
know what to do so the first town I saw with enough lights, I flew
down the middle of Main Street real low and got the name of the town
either off the movie house or the bank and then looked it up on my
map. I was way off course and had to figure my heading to the next
checkpoint. I made it okay but was about a half hour overdue and they
thought I had gone down. I didn't get reprimanded so I figure they
thought I had used my head to solve my problem and did the right
thing.
Almost all of our flying here was takeoffs and landings and in the
air we practiced spins, slow rolls, snap rolls, and figure eights to
get the feel of the airplane and develop our control. It was hard to
get the plane out of a tight spin but it was an important thing to
learn.
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