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1925, with Cessna as President, Walter Beech as Vice-President, and Lloyd Stearman as Chief Engineer. Their first Travel Air, a 3-seat biplane, was completed that spring. Powered by a 90-horsepower OX engine, it had a 33-foot-span upper wing, 29 f [[strikethrough]] ee [[/strikethough]] oot lower, and weighed 1,200 pounds. On test it gave a fine performance and showed good load-carrying ability. Walter Beech flew one in the Ford Tour that year and by the end of 1925 nineteen planes had been built and sold.

In 1926 they made 46 planes, but by the end of the year Cessna and Beech disagreed on plane types. Cessna had always favored monoplanes while Beech insisted on biplanes. Toward the end of 1926 Cessna built a 4-place, externally-braced cabin monoplane powered by a 120-horsepower Anzani engine. He built this plane away from the factory and at his own expense, to satisfy his personal desire. He succeeded in interesting Beech in this plane and after demonstrating it to National Air Transport an order was obtained for several planes of this type. As a result Travel Air started to build an externally-braced monoplane, powered by a Wright J-5 engine. It was successful and soon Travel Air monoplanes established several noteworthy records, including some of the first transpacific flights to Hawaii, but the majority of the firm's pro-duction remained biplanes.

In the spring of 1927 Cessna wanted to build a full-cantilever Travel Air monoplane, but Beech would not agree, and as a result Cessna sold his stock to Beech in April and resigned from the company. He bought a shop in Wichita and at once started to work on a 3-place, full cantilever, cabin mon [[strikethrough]] i [[/strikethrough]] oplane powered by a 90-horsepower Anzani engine. A later version used an Anzani of 120-horsepower.

Called the "Comet," it was ready for tests by midsummer and highly successful from the start. Impressed by its performance, he organized a company and sold stock to build a factory. Victor H. Ro [[strikethrough]] o [[/strikethrough]] s of Omaha, Nebraska, became one of the major investors in the new venture and the firm became known as the

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