Dear Folks,

Things have been pretty quiet here of late. Cloudy weather and periodic rains, which should have come a lot earlier if the spring hadn’t been one of the driest in local history, have been greatly interfering with flying operations here. There was a stretch of three days ending a week ago that came just before the last stage of my training, nine plane formation, in Squadron 12. I finally finished this up last Saturday and so graduated from the intermediate land plane squadron to Squadron 13, the instrument flying squadron. Since then I have been in Link trainers daily, but the weather has been too bad for SNJ flights, which I’m scheduled to have in the mornings. N, incidentally, stands for trainer, J for North American (manufacturer), S—?

The Link trainers, which I’ll try to remember to enclose a picture of, are interesting and I guess much like a plane in behavior when one is under the hood and not able to see out at all. Everything depends on watching the instruments. Orientation is by radio signals, and it’s all rather confusing at first, but not bad fun in spite of being pretty much mechanical. It’s mighty hot work in this extremely muggy weather, though the temperature doesn’t usually get much over 80 or 85. Though one has to sit around the squadron all morning regardless of whether one gets in a flight or not, the Link hops take just two hours of the P.M. and are over at 5 at the latest, which makes things pretty nice and easy. Now also there are days off in sight, one I hope on Saturday and if so, I’ll be headed for the beach for the first time literally in months—either alone by bus or with a friend who has been saving up his gas.

Last night I went ashore for the first time in 10 days. There wasn’t enough time to make it worthwhile over the week-end—checking out of 12 and into 13, first link hop, a lecture and a watch in our barracks. Another fellow by the name of Bob Marshall who, incidentally went to Yale F.S. but not until last year, invited me to some other people’s house to dinner—my first dinner invitation since that to the Shiefflins’ (I still can’t spell it) Christmas day. They were a Dr. Ormandoff, expert on malaria, and his wife. They know the Sedgwicks pretty well, I gather, and are very nice and gave us a good dinner too.

Don’t know what to say about prospective trip south. It would be fine for me, but terribly hot and probably rainy. Remember too that I may still get through by the middle of August.

Love to All

Toots

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