Dec 1st 1942
Dear Mother:
I haven’t been off the station since I last wrote. For the last three or four weeks we have been flying Sunday morning which keeps us in on Saturday night.
I have now got over 21 hours of flying 6 of which is solo. All this solo has been on the circuit but now I will be able to leave the circuit and practise the other phases of flying. And high time too—it is so long since I made a right hand turn I have almost forgotten how. My landings are far from perfect yet but the number of good ones each hour increases and the odd one is really good.
It was awfully crowded in the circuit yesterday and it really keeps you busy looking at your instruments and keeping a very watchful eye for other planes.
So far I have not been transferred to another class even for flying. We write our final exams in ground school next week. I don’t think the class as a whole will do very well as nobody bothers to study. It is rather hard to know just what to study as ground school seems so disorganized.
The instructor who soloed me is very optimistic. He says I can finish up with the rest and it sounds O.K. on paper. 2 hrs a day for 20 days makes the total up to the minimum 60. Actually it is hard to average this much and I should get much more than 60 due to soloing so late. Also it will be hard to catch up in night flying as the others will be finished with this before I am ready to start. The only chance I see is that if the class happens to get leave I might forgo it and hence catch up.
Link is as maddening as ever. Today I was doing turns which means another instrument to watch. This is a stop watch which you start when the turn commences. Turning a rate 1 turn on the indicator is 3° per second.
Today the station changed over from civilian to RCAF as far as flying is concerned. This brings some funny circumstances. Most of the older and hence better pilots here are sgts. Even the chief flying instructor is a sgt. while some of the junior instructors are pilot officers.
We moved to a different barrack block last night and it seems to be devoid of any heat. The old one was unsatisfactory too for the must have been 10° difference in temp on upper and lower beds. When it was really uncomfortably hot on the upper bed even for me it was chilly on the lower beds.
Thank Mary for the pictures she sent. I hope you got the photos I sent O.K.
With love from
Tony.
[Note: Transcription provided by collection donor.]
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