Piper Cub. Awright... now we are going waayy back. My first attempt at learning to fly took place in 1959. In a J-3.
The plane had no fuel gauge. It had a coat hanger on a float. TINS. It had no radio; you tilted your wings back and forth to get a green hand-held light from the tower.
To start the sucker, you pumped the primer thingy until a tad of gas ran down the instrument panel... <-- TINS. You turned the magneto switch on and the guy outside spun the prop. When the guy spins the prop, you have your feet in the gouged-out wooden floor by the pedals (holding the brakes on).
The student sits in the back seat. Always. Forever. Even if he buys the fargin plane and flies solo. The J3 front seat is for Instructors. You can graduate to the front seat if you have your license and a passenger. Your passenger can go in the back. The fargin thing just will not fly with a single person sitting in the front. It's a center of gravity thing with a plane made of balsa wood and women's used stockings.
The door (hah!) is closed with a little barrel bolt that will vibrate out while you fly. No biggie.
My first flight was sorta... horrible. The instructor asked me how high up we were. I guessed a thousand feet. We were 300 feet up. Jeez. When we got up to 1000 feet, we did "the effects of unusual attitudes in flight" <-- I will always remember that.
As we were tootling along, the instructor stressed what was normal/level flight for a J3:
"One inch of dirt over the nose, one foot of air under each wing."
Sounds simple, right? Yeah. Three feet of air under one wing, a foot of air over the nose... Stupid plane would NOT fly straight and level. Until the instructor took over.
We allowed the plane to fly tilted to one side. The plane was falling sideways in a horrible goosey manner. We did Dutch Rolls <-- If you do not know what they are, consider yourself blessed.
Then -- We. Did. A. Stall. My dinky little seat belt popped open. The side "door" was open. The stick (no steering wheel) was disconnected from anything.
Ooohh-KAY. Then we did some more Dutch Rolls. I suddenly had to call dinosaurs. I leaned out the nonexistent door and barfed downwind.
And now, Gentle Reader, we come to the physics of it all. A lovely vacuum forms behind your head when you stick it out of an airplane. Nature abhors a vacuum, so the grug comes back to give your face a totally even coat.
And I had to wash the airplane. I asked if any other students got sick.
His answer:
"You took a lot longer than most, but -- every effing one." 
. Thank you buddy. 
