The machine seen above, a Maurice Farman, is taking part in an air-race at Hendon, and is “banking” heavily as it rounds one of the wooden towers that mark the course.
Naval and military airmen predominate at the schools; but there are many civilians, also, who come to learn to fly. Some of them, after they are skilled, become professional pilots, being employed by an aeroplane company to demonstrate its machines: others, having money to invest, will buy one or two craft and start a flying school of their own; others again, after purchasing a machine, will take it abroad with them and give exhibition flights, visiting places if possible where aviation has not been seen before. Some men, adopting this plan in early days, had experiences which were the reverse of pleasant. High winds blew occasionally, thus preventing them from flying upon the day arranged; whereupon the spectators, having come long distances perhaps to see a man ascend, were so furious at their disappointment that they broke from their enclosures and wrecked the aeroplane in its tent. It happened sometimes, too, that a man—rendered foolhardy by the clamour of a crowd—would ascend when conditions were dangerous, and be blown to the ground and killed. But large sums of money were to be made by demonstration flights, and so pilots were found ready to run grave risks—ascending often from cramped and awkward grounds, and making flights over localities upon which, had their motors failed, they would have found no safe alighting point.
Among those who meet at a flying school—instructors, pupils, and mechanics—there is a feeling of friendly regard; and most men, after they have learned to fly, look back upon their training with a feeling of regret that it is ended. There is good fellowship in the adventures of the day—much laughter, too, at the mistakes which are made; and some of them, without doubt, prove distinctly amusing. It happens occasionally, for instance, that a pupil will, after being given control of a machine for the first time, lose his head completely in a panic, and do just the things which he has been instructed to avoid. In gliding down from a flight, for instance, the engine should be switched off; but sometimes the novice—engrossed by his movements of the elevating lever—will forget all about his motor. Descending at a tremendous pace, and with the engine still running, he will strike the ground with a crash and crumple up his chassis; and then no one is more surprised than he is at what has occurred. It may happen also that a novice, when he is merely running a machine across the ground, will be seized by panic, or some form of mental paralysis. Perhaps he may fail to shift his rudder and so collide with some obstruction or another machine; or he may—as was the case with one pupil at a well-known school—simply sit helpless in his seat and allow his craft, with its motor running at full speed, to charge pell-mell into the fence which bordered the aerodrome. Then, standing up in the wrecked machine, and staring blankly at those who ran to him, he confessed that he had forgotten, utterly, each and all of the things he should have done.
There is an unconscious humour sometimes in a pupil’s remark after he has met with a mishap. One, attempting too steep a turn, side-slipped and fell with a crash, wrecking his machine completely. The instructor hurried to the spot, fearing he might be hurt; but he scrambled from the wreckage without a scratch. Then walking up to the instructor, he observed very gravely:
“I say, I’m so sorry: I’m afraid I’ve damaged your machine.”
But it was in the early days, more than at the present time, that learning to fly proved an adventure. Now it is a business, and one conducted so admirably that a pupil passes from stage to stage with a real pleasure. He knows, before he begins his tuition, exactly what his fee will be. If he wrecks an aeroplane, if he knocks a hole in the side of a shed, if he rushes full-tilt into another machine—all such misdemeanours mean nothing to him financially. But it should be mentioned, incidentally, that such wild deeds are mostly things of the past; such exploits, for instance, of that of the happy-go-lucky pupil who, after insisting upon being allowed to use a craft with an abnormally powerful motor, sprang into the air at his first attempt, and flew for nearly a mile in a wavering flight—landing eventually, strange to say, without in any way damaging himself or his machine. Experience now proves so valuable in the art of learning to fly, that even a clumsy pupil is safeguarded from accident. A serious mishap at a flying school is very rare. There are small breakages, of course; but any injury to pupil, or to anyone else connected with the school, is most satisfactorily averted: and this safety is gained by so carefully planning his course of instruction that the novice is doing always something that is well within his powers.
Matters were entirely different in the pioneer days; then a man was given a machine, after a little preliminary tuition, and allowed to do pretty much as he liked—with results, as may be imagined, which were sometimes remarkable. At one of the French schools, after making a short flight in a monoplane, a novice sprang from his machine before it had come to a standstill, and with his motor still running, although he had throttled it down. His idea was to bring the craft to a temporary halt by holding it back, and then to turn it round by swinging its tail—and with its engine still in operation—so that he might leap in again and fly back across the aerodrome. This daring manœuvre, attempted because he had not as yet mastered the trick of circling while in the machine, was quite successful up to a point. Unfortunately, however, while holding to the side of the hull, and digging his heels into the ground to check the momentum of the craft, the pupil happened to push over the lever which controlled the motor. Accelerating rapidly, the engine drew forward the monoplane with a jerk; the pupil was thrown from his feet and fell prone, and the machine, without a guiding hand upon its levers, rushed across the ground and then rose into the air. An extraordinary flight it made, watched breathlessly by those who stood upon the aerodrome; first upwards, then downwards, and then sideways, until finally, losing its balance in a wavering turn, it fell with a crash and was destroyed.
The first thing one must do in learning to fly, is to become familiar with the position and movements of the levers of a machine; and these, as we have explained, are simple. Experience, indeed, after one method and another has been tried, has brought all systems so that they bear a resemblance to each other. In one machine a hand-wheel may be employed, in another perhaps a lever; but the idea underlying all of them is the same. It is that a pilot’s actions, while he balances his craft, should be natural and instinctive—that his lever should swing in the direction he would turn, were he controlling his machine by a movement of the body. Upon a typical school biplane, such as a pupil learns first to fly, he has only two levers with which he need concern himself. One, which he holds in his right hand, controls the rising and alighting and the balance of his machine; the other, which is in the form of a bar upon which he rests his feet, swings the rudder and steers him from side to side. There are, in addition, convenient to his left hand, the switch and small throttle-lever which operate the motor. The simplicity of the control is shown by [Fig. 94]. What the pupil does—as a first stage in his tuition—is to seat himself in the machine, while it stands at rest on the ground, and move the levers so that he becomes accustomed to their action.
