At 26 years old in June 1969, I soloed at 9.3 hours in an Aeronca Chief, near Manhattan, IL (from a farmer's private strip). I didn't do half bad the first two times around, but on the third one I had green stains on the wingtip from an excursion through the corn. Right at the approach end of the 1900 foot runway were the ubiquitous power lines, and I was a hair high and fast. During the flare (held too long), I decided I needed to go around, but I was already behind the power curve, and would have touched down a second later (hindsight, of course) had I not added the full 65 ponies in that cowling, which just dragged me sideways (rudder anyone) through the corn.

The next (and only other) time I swerved like that was in Dec 1976, in Albuquerque, when a guy I was trying to check out in a Stearman banged the tail on the ground after a wheel landing, and one spring came off the tailwheel steering -- full opposite rudder and brake weren't enough to fight the spring and to stop the ground loop. Fortunately, there were just scrape marks on the wingtip. A side note: two GADO feds (I knew them both) watched this happen, since they were investigating a minor accident at the time.