. That's right."

So goes the business of instruction through the lessons on straight
flying, gentle turns, misuse of controls, side-slipping, and approach,
take-off, and landing. The trips should average thirty-five or forty
minutes, long enough to teach the lesson, but not long enough to weary
the pupil. Here at take-off and landing the pupil finds himself up
against the most difficult part of his training. He has the problem of
stopping a large machine weighing a ton or more, traveling at a
landing speed of forty to fifty miles an hour, with the center of
gravity just balanced over the under-carriage. An error in judgment
will pile the machine up on its nose with a crashed propeller, and
perhaps two broken wings and damaged under-carriage. Not a dangerous
accident for the pilot, but very humiliating.

Army practice has shown that a pupil should have about sixty practice
landings dual, that is to say, coached and helped by his instructor.
By this time he has a total flying time of six to twelve hours. At
this point, before he goes solo, the Gosport system provides that he
shall be taken to a reasonably safe height for the practice of high
maneuvers. At a height of say two thousand five hundred feet the
instructor shows him how a stalled machine falls into a spin. The
question of teaching higher maneuvers to civilian pilots is open to
argument.

As soon as the instructor shuts off the engine the machine rapidly
loses flying speed. It reaches a point where there is not enough air
passing over the wing surfaces to support the plane in the air. Her
nose begins to drop, and he pulls the stick back. The stick is full
back, she stalls, topples over on her side, and plunges nose first.
The instructor kicks on full rudder, and the world whirls below like a
top, and the air whistles, swish, swish, swish, in the wires at every
turn. Stick forward, opposite rudder, and she comes out so fast that
your head swims. That is the spin.

"Now you try it," says the instructor. For there is nothing to a spin
unless a machine does not come out of it--a rare thing if the plane
is properly handled. The pupil is now ready to go solo, and for the
first couple of hours' solo flying he does nothing but make circuits
around the field, landing and taking off. Then his instructor takes
him dual for forced-landing practice, business of getting down into a
field within gliding range by gliding turns. Then the pupil tries it
solo, throttling down