It was the first time that Amelia had taken into her confidence someone not directly connected with her flight. Lucy Challiss did not betray her trust.
Unlike the first flight across the Atlantic in the Friendship plane, which had three engines, pontoons, and three crewmen, the Vega with its one engine and fixed wheels would have to go the whole distance with one pilot. For the next month, therefore, AE sharpened her reactions in the conditions demanded in blind flying. For hours at a time she practiced flying by her instruments alone: setting a course to some distant city, then by following the dial of the gyrocompass and keeping the Vega straight and level by flying the needle and ball of the turn and bank indicator, she would compute the time and distance from the chronometer, and finally look out from the cockpit to see if she had made her estimated time of arrival at her destination. She would then turn around and go through the same procedure all the way back to New Jersey.
If possible, she wanted to be ready for the Atlantic take-off on the same day as Lindbergh, five years earlier, had left New York. She had never forgotten the time in Boston when she read about Lindy’s historic flight and how she had hoped even then before the Friendship venture that she might, somehow, be the first woman to attempt the same flight.
While she waited at Rye or Teterboro, she often phoned the office of Doc Kimball at the Weather Bureau office in New York and asked for a prognosis. The weather conditions that had been forecast for the North Atlantic were not too encouraging, but she had decided that if there was the slightest chance to be on her way she would take it.
On the morning of Friday, May 20, AE climbed into her car and started for New Jersey. She was on her way to see Bernt Balchen at Teterboro airport. Ground fog, heavy and wet, bubbled on the windshield of the car; she turned on the wipers. It did not seem to her now that she would get off this gray day. When she turned onto the George Washington Bridge she could barely make out the tops of the towers. The Hudson River below was clouded in mist.
Just before noon at the airport she was summoned to the telephone by Eddie Gorski, her mechanic. It was GP, calling from the office of Doc Kimball at the Weather Bureau. “It looks like the break we’ve been waiting for,” he said. “Doc Kimball says this afternoon is fine to get to Newfoundland—Saint John’s, anyway.”
Amelia asked for particulars about the weather. A “low,” she learned, which had threatened the first leg of the flight, had dissipated to the southeast; and a “high,” which promised good weather, was moving in beyond Newfoundland.
“O.K.!” she said. “We’ll start.”
In ten minutes she made final arrangements with Bernt Balchen and Eddie Gorski. They had agreed to fly with her as far as Newfoundland, to make sure everything was all right before the Atlantic take-off. Amelia looked at her watch. There was no time for lunch.
Always a fast driver, AE now drove quickly back to Westchester. Take-off had been set for 3:00 P.M. She had to pick up her clothes and maps, and then meet GP at the New York end of the George Washington Bridge. Two o’clock, he had said. She swung into the driveway. She had driven the last twenty-five miles in fifteen minutes.