While learning, and indeed whenever possible, you should examine the ground before attempting to fly over it. The pupil should inspect every inch of the course over which he is to fly, by walking carefully over it, noticing all the holes and obstructions in the ground. Then should it be necessary to land, for any cause whatever, he will know instinctively where to land and what to avoid in landing. Keep away from other aeroplanes, for the wind-wash in their wake may tip up your plane and cause serious trouble.
My advice to the amateur begins and ends with one injunction: "Go slow." Yes, for more than a month, "Go slow." It is hard to resist the temptation to try to do stunts; with a certain amount of familiarity with your machine, so that you feel you could do a great deal more than you are doing, and with some experienced and confident performer all but turning somersaults with his machine over your head, to the delight of the crowd, it is hard to resist giving one's self the thrill that comes from taking a risk and not being caught, but you will do the stunts all the better for going slow at first.
Mr. Charles Battell Loomis, the late American humourist, said once, in talking about the opening of the fields of air:
"It was thought that the automobile was a machine of danger, but the aeroplane has made it comparatively safe. A man in an aeroplane a mile above the earth, taking his first lesson all by himself, is in a perilous position. He has not one chance in a thousand of ever owning another machine.
"A man who will fly over a city full of hard-working people is a selfish brute. Until a man is absolutely sure of himself he should always fly with a good-sized net suspended beneath his machine.
"The man in the street has always hated new things. He hated velocipedes, then bicycles, then safeties, then automobiles, then motorcycles, but he has not yet learned to hate the aeroplane. But wait until monkey wrenches begin to fall on Broadway or beginners begin to fall on the man in the street. Then he will be mad at the aeroplane–if there is anything left of him."
Allowing for the humorous exaggeration, there is this element of truth in this that mechanical flight has as yet a strong element of uncertainty.
Yet there are certainly wonderful stunts to be done with a flying machine, and the fun is as much in the effect on the flier as on the audience; perhaps even more so. I would fly for the mere sport if I were not in the business, for there is a fascination about flying that it is unnecessary to explain and difficult to resist. You can chart currents of the sea, but the wind is such a capricious element that though there are, so to speak, outline maps that could be made of the general direction of the winds, there will always be a certain uncertainty about their conduct. Nevertheless there are so much greater possibilities in flying than in any other of the arts, that it is no wonder the amateur wants to develop them. And in conclusion I can say that an aeroplane in perfect condition is as safe as an automobile going at the same speed–and I mean it!
[CHAPTER III HOW IT FEELS TO FLY (By Augustus Post.)]
There is no one question that people ask more often than: "How does it feel to fly!" Perhaps a passenger feels more keenly the sensations of flight than an aviator because his mind is not taken up with the operation of the controls.