at an exhibition on december 31, 1911 – january 1, 1912 in santa rosa, california, cooke took a test flight in a biplane that had been constructed by fred j. wiseman that wiseman had used for the world's first airmail flight from petaluma, california to santa rosa. after the los angeles meet, cooke no longer had an aircraft to fly, so he arranged to purchase the wiseman biplane and had it crated up and sent to emeryville, california for an exhibition where he was to race lincoln beachy. compared to beachy's aircraft, the wiseman biplane was under powered and beachy beat him easily in all five days of the event. to improve the performance, cooke replaced the hall-scott a-2 with a roberts two-stroke motor. cooke continued to modify this aircraft as he used it for exhibition flying across the united states during 1912. the modified aircraft became known as the wiseman-cooke biplane. this aircraft became the second cooke piloted aircraft donated to the smithsonian where it was restored and put on display at the national postal museum. by late 1912, cooke had arrived in sandusky, ohio where he formed the cooke aeroplane co. to build aircraft of his own design. the roberts motor company let him use a portion of their facility to work on his aircraft.