accepted a ride with me. However, I didn’t start her aeronautical education until a long while afterward.
In passing I should call attention to the fact that it wasn’t really necessary to have any license at this period. There were no regulations such as exist today. People just flew, when and if they could, in anything which would get off the ground. Methods of teaching flying have greatly improved over those of the dim dark ages when I learned. There were no schools then, as we know them now, nor standardized equipments. Fundamentally, of course, the principles are just the same and so are the fledgling flyers.
Perhaps the easiest way for me to give a picture of what flying instruction is like is to tell just what I had to do at first, and to compare that with the present requirements for obtaining a flyer’s license. As I have said, my training took place in California. The plane used was a Curtiss Canuck very like the famous Jenny of war time memory. Both of these planes and their motors, as well, have been replaced by improved equipment.
In 1920, two years after the Armistice, airplanes were not so well built as at present and motors had bad habits of stopping at inopportune moments. Pilots just naturally expected to have to sit down once every so often because of engine failure. The power plants of today are a happy contrast. It is rare indeed that one “conks”, if properly cared for, so great has been the increase in reliability. Conse-
