“Where’s the sack of sand?”
“Did you think of that?”
“Yes, sir. If I am in the front and you are in the other place, and the airplane balances and flies easily, there must be something to make up the difference when you aren’t along!”
“Bud—you’ll get along!”
And when the sack had provided stability in the front place, Larry, feeling a little anxious, but more about making mistakes under the pilot’s watchful eye in starting than about his performance in the air, got the engine started, warmed up, checked, put the craft into the wind, signaled for chocks to be pulled away, gave a spurt of the “gun” to start it, accelerated speed till the ship began to want to take the air itself, having remembered to use the elevators to lift the tail skid free from dragging—and with a return of elevators to normal right away to keep the craft level on its run—he drew back on the stick, widened the throttle feed a trifle, returned the elevators to normal as he attained the safe climbing angle, and was up and away on his first solo flight.
In his whole life he had never felt such a sense of elation!
The whole fifteen minutes that he stayed up were like moments of freedom—alone, master of his craft, able to control it as he would—there is not, in the whole world, another sensation to equal that of the first solo flight of a youthful pilot who combines confidence in himself with knowledge of his ’plane and how it responds.
The heavens were his!
No bird ever was more free.
And when he made his landing, perfectly setting down on wheels and tail-skid as Jeff had taught him, “I wish all my pupils were like him,” said a flying instructor who had been watching. Larry, doffing his tight “crash” helmet, overheard.