to a sudden stop on the ground. In the excitement of my anticipated solo flight, I had forgotten to advance the magneto! I succeeded in my second attempt, and remained airborne for a period of 4 1/2 minutes; but I was so scared that I decided the place for Mr. Coffyn's boy was on the ground, and the sooner I could get there, the better! Afterwards, my piloting technique developed, which increased my confidence to the extent that I survived three crashes caused by structural failure, walking away from two of them, and swimming away from the third one when the elevator control wire of my plane snapped, and I was rescued by the same motor boat that I had been previously racing fifty feet above! Toward the end of my two year contract with the Company, I was loaned to Russell Alger, of Detroit, to teach him and his brother Fred, to fly. Their homes were located on the edge of Lake St. Clair, so it was decided to attach pontoons under each of the two skids of the Model B Wright plane. John W. Hacker, a well known motor boat builder, was requisitioned to construct them. They were of mahogany, covered with varnished cloth, and on September 30, 1911, I made my first flight with them, but they were too lightly constructed and did not survive the test. Hacker then built aluminum pontoons, with a wood ash frame work, and these were the first of their kind ever constructed for a plane. My contract with the Wright Company having expired, I shipped the plane, equipped with the aluminum pontoons, to New York, with high aspirations of setting myself up in my own business. So I finally approached J. Stuart Blackstone, president of the Vitagraph Company of America, in the prospects of obtaining good aerial moving pictures for his motion picture company. After a lengthy discussion I persuaded him to let me try this, and armed with a sizeable contract in my pocket plus a newspaper photographer who had never been in a plane, I took off in my seaplane to take moving pictures of New York City and the Bay on one of the coldest days in February 1912. Through John McKenzie, who was later in charge of LaGuardia Airport, I was granted permission by the Dock Department to use Pier A at the Battery, making it the first seaplane base operated by the City of New York. In my desire to secure better moving pictures I devised an electric chain drive with two tiny motors connected to the hand crank shaft of the camera mounted on a stand between the two seats, with a common light switch' to start and stop it. This worked perfectly, in spite of the fact that it was the first electrically driven camera ever used. I took excellent shots of lower New York and made the first flight under the Brooklyn Bridge, from which I enjoyed a reputation similar to that which Steve Brodie gained for having jumped off it! The Vitagraph Company received a thousand foot film which they exhibited universally, and through newspaper publicity of my flying, I signed up fifty thousand dollars worth of contracts only to be put out of the flying game for nine months because an automobile ran off a bridge in Central Park! In January 1913, Frank Russell persuaded me to go to Marblehead, Mass., to be test pilot and chief instructor for the Burgess Airplane Company, as I had previously taught Sterling Burgess to fly. I moved the Wright Flying School to Aiken, South Carolina and taught Norman Prince and Thomas Hitchcock, Sr., to fly; the former later organized the Lafayette Esquadrille. When the First World War broke out, I went into the Air Corps as a Captain. Since I had seven years flight experience I was made Officer in Charge of Flying at Rich Field, Waco, Texas, where with approximately 20 civilian and some 18 Army Instructors under me, I supervised the instruction of 300 flying cadets. They were a grand bunch of lads and fortunately, not one of the cadets were killed during the course of instruction. Often, on their solo cross country flights, there would be some infraction of the rules when they would phone from a farm claiming motor trouble, which usually turned out to be a good looking farmer's daughter! After six months of hard and hectic work at Waco, they transferred me to Henry J. Damm Field, Babylon, L. I., as Commanding Officer. There were two RAF Colonels and three Majors who far outranked me. It seemed that this might have made my position a bit difficult, but we got along first rate and were the best of friends. The fifty cadets we turned out went through their instruction very well, and I was to receive my Majority and take five squadrons overseas. But at that time the Armistice was signed, which retracted our orders, and we had to remain here. In January 1919, I resigned from the Air Corps, feeling that I had enough flying and would give it up. But the lure of airplanes returned after six months, and I started my career as a free lance pilot, on occasion having the dubious distinction of being called by that much abused and overworked title of Aviation Consultant, which covered a multitude of sins, simply because I could take a plane off the ground and get it back safely. Things became rather dull until the early part of 1944 when Igor Sikorsky came out with his outstanding development of the helicopter-something man had been trying to accomplish for centuries and which Sikorsky had first tried as a young man in Russia 1909. Upon visiting him at Bridgeport, he had "Les" Morris put the VS "300" through its paces and again the urge to fly overcame me. This time it was helicopters! I asked Igor how long it would take me to learn to handle one of them, and with his extreme courtesy and well known 'charming manner he replied, "Frank, I would like to teach you to do it, and I don't think it would take much more than about three hours!" I was thrilled at the prospects of this offer from a man who was an authority on helicopters. Shortly thereafter, the Army Air Forces took over the plant for production making it impossible for me to receive my instruction. This did not quell my desire to learn to fly the helicopter and as I was Safety Director of the Liquidometer Corporation in Long Island City, makers of fuel guages, precision and recording instruments used in almost all types of Army and Navy planes, I wrangled (Continued on Page 44)