Learning to Fly: A Practical Manual for Beginners

by Claude Grahame-White; Harry Harper

Naturally there is an ideal temperament for flying; but it is one which, owing to the combination of qualities that are required, is very rarely met with. The man who possesses it is gifted with courage, ambition, "dash," and with a readiness in an emergency that amounts to intuition. And yet these positive qualities are, in the ideal temperament, allied to, and tempered by, a strong vein of prudence and of caution. The pilot has absolute system, method, and thoroughness in everything he does. The average pupil cannot hope to be so luckily endowed. But he can study his personality, and seek to repress traits that may seem harmful.

There is need in flying for a sound judgment, one that will enable a man to come to a decision quickly and yet accurately. Things happen rapidly in the air. It is one of the grim aspects of flying that, just at a moment when everything appears secure, a sudden disaster may threaten. So it is of vast importance to a pilot, if he has to fly regularly, that he should have an instinctive and dependable judgment; a capacity for deciding quickly and without panic; a capacity, when several ways present themselves of extricating himself from some quandary, of being able to choose the right one, and of not having to think long before doing so. This implies a combination really of judgment and resource. The man of confidence, the man of resource, is well endowed for flying. But he must not be over-confident. The over-confident man is a menace to himself and to others. It is not a proper spirit at all in which to approach aviation. We do not know enough about the navigation of the air to be in the least over-confident. The spirit, rather, should be one of humility—a determination to proceed warily, and to make very certain of what limited knowledge we do possess.

Two of the worst traits in an aviator are impatience and irritability. A man who has these temperamental drawbacks in a form which is strongly marked, and who cannot control them, should not think of becoming an aviator. The man who is impatient and irritable finds himself out of harmony with the whole theory of aerial navigation. There is a long list of "don'ts" in flying; in the handling of one's machine, in the weather one flies in, in all the feats that one should attempt and leave alone. A number of details must be memorised, and must never be forgotten or overlooked, trivial though some of them may seem. The frame of mind of the man who flies must be alert, yet quiet and reposeful; he must be clear-headed, not hot-headed. The man who is in a hurry, who ignores details when he sets out on a flight, is the man who runs risks and is bound sooner or later to pay the penalty. The perils of recklessness in flying are very great. The man who "takes chances," who thinks he can do something when, as a matter of fact, he has neither sufficient knowledge or experience, runs a very grave and constant risk. It is the thoughtful, considering frame of mind, particularly in a pupil, which is the safe one; but this must not be taken to imply a type of man who lacks power of action. Initiative, and a quick capacity for action, are most necessary in aviation. New problems are being faced continually, and the brain succeeds which is the most active and original.

CHAPTER III

FIRST EXPERIENCES WITH AN AEROPLANE

(AS DESCRIBED BY MR. GRAHAME-WHITE)

After a period of ballooning, which offers experience for an aviator in the judging of heights and distances, and in growing accustomed to the sensation of being in the air, I devoted a good deal of time and attention—more indeed at the time, and in view of my other responsibilities, than I could reasonably spare—to a study of the theory of aeroplane construction, and to the making of models. This was prior to 1909; Bleriot had not yet flown the Channel in his monoplane. But when he did I put models aside, and determined to buy an aeroplane and learn to fly.

At the end of August, 1909, so that I might inspect the various aeroplanes that were then available, and they were few enough, I went to Rheims, in France, and attended the first flying meeting the world had seen. At the aerodrome I met and talked with the great pioneers: with Bleriot, fresh from his cross-Channel triumph; with Levavasseur, the designer of the beautiful but ill-fated Antoinette monoplane, which had, through engine failure, let Hubert Latham twice into the Channel during his attempts to make the crossing; with Henry Farman who, fitting one of the first Gnome motors to a biplane of his own construction, flew for more than three hours at Rheims, and created a world's record; and also with M. Voisin, whose biplane was then being flown by a number of pilots.

Finally, after careful consideration, I made a contract with M. Bleriot to purchase from him, at the end of the meeting, a monoplane of a type that appeared first at Rheims, and of which there was not another model then in existence. This machine differed considerably from the one with which M. Bleriot had flown the Channel. His cross-Channel monoplane was a single-seated craft fitted with an air-cooled motor of about 25 h.p. The machine I agreed to buy at Rheims, and which was known as Bleriot No. XII., would carry two people, pilot and passenger, while it had an 8-cylinder water-cooled motor developing 60 h.p.—an exceptional power in those days. The position of the occupants, as they sat in the machine, differed from the arrangement in the cross-Channel Bleriot. In the latter the pilot sat in a hull placed between the planes, and with his head and shoulders above them. But in this new and larger machine the pilot and passenger sat in seats which were placed below the planes.