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177

San Francisco, 1911.

with rope wrapped around two with the center portion laid across the track, he had eight or ten sets of spools. The advancing aeroplane would pick up the ropes, the resistance of the spinning spools would stop the aeroplane. Ely was very grateful. The Navy followed his suggestion and instead of spools, they used bags filled with dry sand. He made his flight and landed on the boat without accident. On his return he had a number of conditions to consider, first the tide caused the ship to swing around with the stearn in the wrong direction as he would have to fly with the wind, second the wind was in the wrong direction and there was nothing that could be done about it. Fortunately the deck was inclined toward the stearn which helped. On the take-off he made good speed toward the stearn, and when he reached the limit of his runway, he was able to lift a foot or two, but, he immediately settled almost to the surface of the water before he was able to lift again, hi finally made it and became a great hero over night. The Navy adopted this method of stopping their aeroplanes when they hit the deck of the carrier's, naturally improvements have been made and today each carrier is equipped for this purpose.

At the close of the meet, Mr. Latham caught his [[strikethrough]] wheel [[/strikethrough]] landing wheel in the top wire of a fence. The wreck was a complete washout except the motor, which was shipped to France.