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and Harvey Crawford. At that time Stites was an amateur pilot and was teamed with Balloonist Charles Brodwich in local exhibitions. Brodwick had a contract to make balloon ascensions at Ocean Park for the month of May, 1912, and, to help Barnhart, Brodwich and Stites offered to install a Hall-Scott engine in his plane and take it to Ocean Park where Stites would fly it and give Barnhart a share of the earnings. Barnhart agreed and in February his plane was taken to Griffith Park aviation field where the engine was installed, following which Barnhart began to hop the machine, assisted by Stites. 
The plane was well built and flew beautifully. Victor Carlstrom was looking for flying instruction so during March and April Stites taught him to fly on the Barnhart plane at Griffith Park. By the end of April Barnhart was flying quite well and the plane was taken to Ocean Park where Stites flew it as planned, with Barnhart and Carstrom acting as mechanical assistants. There the plane make flight from the ocean beach every day at 3 P.M. on schedule, for the entire month. After the engagement Stites flew the plane from Ocean Beach to Long Beach where he had a smashup in landing. Bernhart repaired the plane, then had exhibition dates at Planada, California in late June and at Butte, Montana July 4th, with Early Daugherty also flying there. Following this Barnhart had to return the Hall-Scott engine, so he installed a Macomber rotary engine with which he did some flying that summer. That fall he sold his plane to Mills Aviators in Chicago.
During this entire period Barnhart had attended night school to further his education and later studied engineering at Throop Polytechnic Institute in night classes.
Early in 1913 he was employed by Glenn Martin as a general mechanic performing shop work and field services. In the spring, Martin sold a plane to Earnest Hodson who planned to use it in motion pictures and he induced Barnhart to join him as mechanic, where he assisted in the making of the early movie thriller "Perils of Pauline". This project was finished by mid-summer, then Barnhart returned to Glenn Martin where he helped build his first pusher biplane with the nacelle-type fuselage, the loop biplane for Lincoln Beachey and the famous Martin 2-place Model TT tractor which became the first modern training plane for the Army.