May 15, 1943
Sat 9:45 P.M.
Dear Folks:
Well I had my first solo ride today. I had 25 min in the air by myself. I was second ride today. We went up and went to an auxiliary field. There I shot 3 landings. I did pretty good on them. It was sort of surprising too because yesterday I couldn’t land that plane right to save my neck. My instructor got so mad he couldn’t see straight. Every time I tried to land it, I bounced way up in the air. This was because I didn’t level off quick enough, and I sort of dived the plane into the ground. And then when we went back to the home field, I made a nice landing. About the first I had made yet. Today I went and made 3 pretty good ones. The first I bounced a little but I made a good recovery and set it down nice then.
After the third one today, the instructor took the plane and parked it in the neutral zone. He never said a word. He just climbed out and handed me the book that we make our flight records in. I made it out and handed it back. He slapped me on the back and said “Good luck.” Then he climbed down and walked away. There I was with a 175 horse power plane on my hands. So I turned around and taxied to the end of the field, headed it up the field and let it go. We have the throttle wide open on the take-off and that engine just roars. I took off and went around the field and landed 3 times. All 3 times I made pretty good landings. The wind was blowing pretty hard too and that makes it difficult to land. I was the first one of my instructor’s students to solo but the boy who went up right after me did too.
I got a letter from Jim the other day. He is pretty smart getting an 11th grade average. My my. I can’t think of much more to say now. It is Sun morning now. I had to stop last night because they made me put the lights out. A lot of the boys got drunk last night. 5 from my room and another fellow were drunk and they run a truck in the ditch. They couldn’t rent a car so they rented a 1 1/2 ton truck. They run it in a ditch and wrecked it. Now they don’t know what is going to come of it. They are saps.
Now that I have soloed I can wear a pair of little wings on my little hat. Not the one with the bill but the other one.
Well I will close I guess.
So long,
Alva
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