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Anytime you get to say, "I got you, you old lop-eared bastard! " as you're buzzing along low to the ground, it's a good day. I love stories like this.

I do wonder about that two-stroke engine in 1913, though.

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What do you wonder about the motor?

It looks to be a 4-cylinder inline, and if it's a two-stroke engine, I wonder what its intended application was. Certainly not aviation, at that point. (I was going to say that there were no 4-cylinder inline two-stroke motorcycles, but I looked around and found that in 1911 there was at least one company, Pierce, manufacturing them.)

EDIT: now I see that the Pierce was not a two-stroke, despite what I had initially read.

It's pretty early for a 2-stroke; at least according to Wikipedia [0], the first practical two-stroke engine was built in 1908 (though patented around 1880). I'd love to hear more specifics on that aspect if anybody has info.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-stroke_engine#History

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