Jan 2 /43

Dear Mother:

I am moved back again to my original hangar but while flying from the other one I got in a lot of flying and I’ve now got 72:45 hrs. That instructor I had at the other hangar could really fly. Last Tuesday we went on a cross country to Saskatoon. I flew in the instructors seat and my instructor took off under the hood and set course under my directions. After awhile, still under the hood, he did some loops and rolls perfectly. I might say here that in the last two days I have had two different instructors whom I have asked to show me rolls. The first one showed me a couple but they were bad. He blamed it on the ship and I know a lot of these ships are hard to roll. The other flatly admitted he couldn’t do rolls very well and didn’t even show me any. You’ll get the idea it cannot be easy under the hood.

Continuing on our way to Saskatoon we started to run into bad weather so I said to the instructor that soon we would both be flying by instruments. So he lifted the hood and I showed him where we were on the map. We had to come down a bit but it wasn’t bad and we had no trouble getting to Sask.

However we stayed too long and the engine got so cold it wouldn’t start when we were ready to leave. The next day it snowed very hard all day so that we couldn’t leave till the following (Thurs.) morning. My instructor wasn’t very happy for he was due for 5 days holiday and wanted to get to Calgary for New Years Eve. (He did too—by flying).

I did my first hours night flying tonight. It was a pitch dark night which did not help any. After that one hour flying was washed out which is most annoying as I have to get a total of 4 and you ca only fly 2 hrs a night. There is night flying on Sun and Mon so I may be able to leave here Tues. But if bad weather stops night flying there may be no more till near the end of next week which would be dreadful.

When I do get leave it will be indefinite—that is I will wait until told to report somewhere. Quite likely it won’t be before Jan 28^th.

Had quite a good time New Years Eve. I teamed up with Dave Bone who used to be in our office and went to a good show and then a dance at the Armouries.

Well with a little luck I should be home quite soon.

With love from
Tony.

[Note: Transcription provided by collection donor.]