The Fun of It/Chapter 6
VAGABONDING
THAT initial flight of mine across the continent proved to be a pleasant interlude. I later found that it marked the first solo trip a woman had made from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back again.[1] But at the time it was to me primarily a vacation—a minor adventure in vagabonding by air and a relaxation from writer’s cramp.
The first stage of my hobo journey took me to Pittsburgh, Dayton, Terre Haute, St. Louis, Muskogee, and on into New Mexico. After straying from the course, I finally landed at Pecos, Texas.
Automobilists universally complain about the lack of parking space. For vehicles of the air the absence of landing fields may be even more inconvenient. When a plane’s motor fails—an occurrence becoming rarer every day—the pilot must make a landing. True, the machine can be controlled from the air and made to glide gently down without the engine running, but it must have a smooth open space for alighting.
As there is always the possibility of some failure in anything man-made, so even with the well behaved motors today, occasional descents are inevitable. And when they come, “parking space” is essential. The field need not be elaborate, although naturally the pilot turns with delight to the large well-kept airport offering hangar service and complete equipment. But where air travel does not warrant great expenditures, a smooth parking space is gratefully used.
As I have said, it is sometimes wise for a pilot to bring his plane down to make a minor adjustment which he couldn’t do in the air. Or he may elect to wait till a storm has passed rather than try to fly through it. Under these circumstances, he may not be so hard put as he is with his motor entirely out, nevertheless safety demands a place to land.
And oh, for a country-wide campaign of sign painting! Coming down through a hole in the clouds, any flyer is thankful for definite information as to his location, even if it is only to check his navigation. If he is off his course, it may be imperative to know where he is in order to safeguard his gasoline supply. Approaching darkness or the necessity for a repair landing makes minutes extremely precious. At such a time, a name on a sign may be a real life saver. Too, inexperienced pilots especially need such added aids to their cross-country flying.
There is also another side to this sign painting business. The city in which you live should be proud enough of itself to be recognized by air travelers. Often the thousands who pass by on the airways can’t do so unless the name is prominently displayed. Though there has been much progress made in the past few years, there is many a community whose shingle might be hung out for the air traveler. Large white or chrome yellow letters painted on some flat roof should announce the names of all progressive cities and towns to the flying world. An arrow pointing the direction to the nearest landing field is also desirable.
Imagine automobiling without signs! Imagine trying to recognize a new town, the way flyers do—a hundred-mile-an-hour look at a checker-board of streets and roofs, trees and fields, with highways and railroads radiating and crisscrossing and perhaps a river or two to complicate—or simplify—the geography lesson.
On my own transcontinental air-gypsying, I saw few towns properly named. In some, the airway sign boards had been so neglected that the lettering was dirty and almost illegible; in others the only words visible from above spelled the names of certain kinds of pills or liniment. The Chambers of Commerce in many communities may be asleep to the value of aerial advertising, but the patent medicine vendors are not. They often paint their signs on sloping roofs to be read alike by those who pass above or below.
Flying low to make out signs on railroad stations or other buildings is dangerous, yet sometimes has to be done. I dare say that in time legislation will make air marking compulsory everywhere, as it already is in Maryland, for instance, for towns with more than 4000 inhabitants. The Department of Commerce suggests a uniform method of placing names near a railroad or close to a main highway for easy recognition. Large gas tanks are good places for signs, also. Once they are looked for in a definite location, they are more easily found from the air.
“My compass reads due west. I have been flying for more than an hour. Speed 100 m.p.h. In half an hour, if the course is correct and I have allowed properly for winds, I ought to cross a river which is fifty miles from Bugville. Beyond that river is a railroad track. The first town which appears to the left should be Prune City.”
Wonder what a pilot thinks about? Well, something very much like that as he flies over unknown territory.
Crossing the continent I contrived to get myself lost, and not because of fog.
Flying west from Fort Worth I struck very bumpy weather. Air bumps act as do waves in a choppy sea, tossing one about. If severe, they make flying a small plane about like riding a couple of oceans in a canoe.
Through particularly bumpy going, while I tried to fly and also to pump gas from the reserve into the gravity tank, I lost my map. In that ship, it usually lay open upon my knee, fastened with a safety pin to my dress. But in the strenuous moments over Texas, the pin was somehow loosened and the map blew away.
When I had a chance to look about, there were no landing marks with which to identify my location. So I decided to follow the same course that I had held over my last-known location, a little south of west.
Somewhat to the north, a highway with many busy cars soon became visible. I turned to fly beside that road. So many cars must be going somewhere, and I felt I would like to go there, too. In all the vast rolling country below, those automobiles were the only signs of life except an occasional ranch house or oil derrick at intervals of many miles. I chased that highway across the state into New Mexico, passing only a few unnamed towns, and then, with misgivings, I watched the cars scatter for their homes. The road and its traveling population simply oozed away, and I was left lonely and lost.
The sun began to sink. The purple haze of the dry countries rose on the horizon. I desired food. My plane desired gas, or would shortly. I wanted very much to get somewhere before dark.
A small cluster of houses grouped around an oil well, swam into the darkening landscape below me. Cautiously I circled low to see the condition of the ground, and the single wide flat thoroughfare of the little community. Convinced that Main Street was the best visible place to land, I sat down at one end. At high altitudes where the air is thin, it is necessary to make a pretty fast landing, so I am afraid I broke speed ordinances as the Avro Avian rolled smartly through the heart of the city.
At once the community turned out to see who was in the plane, and I turned out to find where I was. My friendly metropolis claimed the age of six months, and the title of an oil boom town.
The citizens helped me fold the wings of the biplane and then, after sending telegrams by way of the single telephone, I dined at the Owl Cafe, from the much appreciated but invariable menu of fried eggs, coffee and bread. And the luxury of a real bed!
The coolness of that gorgeous high desert night was very grateful. Flying so much had caused a severe sunburn. For most of the journey, I wore a close fitting hat instead of the helmet which left a sunburned streak across my cheeks. Goggles cannot be abandoned on long hops, except in closed ships. They, of course, bequeath unburned rings of white around the eyes. In my log book I noted that when and if I reached Los Angeles, I should resemble a horned toad.
Down Main Street I took off the next morning, everyone helping me. Unfortunately in the preparations a thorn punctured one of my tires. While I enjoyed my morning eggs, the puncture was repaired. I thought, as I climbed aboard, that the tire was softening, but everyone said I was mistaken.
Then once more the billowing brown areas of the southwest stretched below me. Ocean flying is no more lonely than that over uncharted or uninhabited land. I was told that in about one hundred miles, in a somewhat southwesterly direction, there would be either a river with a railroad to the right, or a railroad main line with a highway on the left, depending on whether I was more west than south and vice versa.
You remember in your automobile touring the hazy rural directions sometimes given you? “About three, four miles down the road, turn to your left by an old barn, then across the creek—.” At least in such cases you have a road to follow.
In this part of the west the rivers wriggle, cutting across country tortuously. I remember late that morning, when I came to a friendly railroad, I experienced much the feeling as did the Friendship crew in sighting land at the end of the transatlantic flight.
As I prepared to land at Pecos, I recalled the uncertainty of the repaired tire and sat down gingerly. The tire actually was flat but the light ship gave no trouble.
Pecos was very kind to me. Citizens repaired the stubborn tire and the Rotary Club, then in session, took me to luncheon. Starting that afternoon for El Paso came the first motor trouble of the trip, and I was forced down, landing among mesquite bushes and salt hills, in the best place—it was none too good—that I could see from 4000 feet.
It was near a road and cars gathered at once, the women seeming especially anxious to see what I looked like. Some day, I dare say, women can be flyers and yet not be regarded as curiosities!
As I was coming down, another plane passed and, with good air manners, circled about until the pilot saw that I was on the ground safely.
Airplanes are meant to fly, and it is sad to see one towed along the road. But it was my fate to see “G-EBUG” (my registration letters) thus return to Pecos. Because the wheels of the plane were not made for much rolling on the ground, we were forced to hold our pace to ten miles an hour and to stop every three miles to let the bearings cool. It was late and dark when the little ship was stowed behind a garage at Pecos, there to await new engine parts from El Paso.
It may not be all plain sailing, of course, if one chooses to step out informally over strange country visiting unfamiliar landing fields. But the fun of it is worth the price.
In regard to “G-EBUG”—these were the British license letters on Lady Heath’s plane and I had left them when I purchased it from her. American licenses are combinations of letters and numbers, thus:
Those planes having an approved type certificate, commonly called an ATC, carry numerals prefixed by “C”. This letter means the plane has passed tests for airworthiness prescribed by the Department of Commerce and may be flown anywhere in the U. S. A. When an “N” precedes the C, it may be flown over foreign territory also. To illustrate, my own Lockheed license number is NC 7952. Of course, all the planes on the airlines have a “C” license.
The Department also issues experimental licenses to be used on planes undergoing certain tests or being built. These numbers are preceded by an “X”.
When a pilot changes any of the details of construction already approved by the Department of Commerce, he must notify an inspector and he then usually receives a restricted or “R” license, depending on the character of his alterations. Colonel Lindbergh’s plane is an example for his number is NR 211.
With the increased number of airplanes to be licensed, the Department has lately been adding a division to the regular NC. Thus, the plane in which I established the first woman’s speed record bore the number NC 497 H.
Now and then, a plane with numbers but no letters at all will be seen. That marking shows it cannot be licensed for some reason but is only identified. (G-EBUG and her kind, when first imported from England, bore only identification numbers.) Planes of the Department of Commerce all bear an S and are usually low numbers, NS 1, 2, 3, and so on.
- ↑ I can find no records to controvert this statement.