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instructing at times when necessary. 
About November 15th, 1911 the Wrights decided to withdraw from the exhibition business and released all of their aviators except Al Welsh, who was retrained as an instructor and test pilot. Since their first training period at the Wright School Turpin and Parmelee had been close friends and had flown together many times on exhibition dates. After being released they decided to go to California for the winter and took two Wright planes with them, intending to do exhibition and passenger flying. One was a standard passenger model, the other an EX single-seat machine. 
They entered the Los Angeles Meet, held January 14th to 28th, 1912 and Turpin made check flights on both planes at Dominguez Field on January 9thg just after they had been assembled. From then until the meet they were both flying actively in preparation for the event. During the meet both did remarkable flying and helped materially in making it a success. Following this both flew at the Oakland, California meet February 17th to 25th, then on March 2d and 3d were at Agricultural Park, Sacramento, California. There Turpin and Parmelee entered into a seven week contract, starting March 25th, flying every weekend on the beach at Venice, California. There they made exhibition flights to attract the crowds and carried passengers. As an added attraction to their show they engaged professional chute jumper, Grant Morton, to make jumps. These were reportedly the first parachute jumps ever made from aeroplanes. 
While flying there Turpin and Parmelee decided to form a partnership and go into the exhibition business in earnest. Evidently feeling they should have new, more modern and faster planes they bought two Gage tractor biplanes with Hall-Scott 60 H.P. engines. Their engagement ended at Venice about April 15th and the first date with their new planes was at Hastings Park, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada May 24th to 26th. Here they had a dangerous assignment. The field was very small and completely surrounded by trees with an electric power line at one end. Due to high customs duties they took only one plane with them, but despite the hazards they put on a very good show and both made several excellent flights. Their chutist was scheduled to be a part of the show but was ill and could not perform 
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