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After endless trials &endash; a neighbour reported seeing Pearse steer his "beast" (the engine he had made) around his farm paddocks using reins attached to the controls, another reported seeing him jogging along after the plane holding the wing's trailing edge &endash; Pearse made his first public flight attempt.
Wheeling his plane down to the school crossroads on Main Waitohi Road, next to the Pearse farm, he tried several times to start the engine in front of a small crowd who had heard that "Bamboo Dick" was up to something. Late in the afternoon the engine finally cranked to life and Pearse lumbered into the air, immediately lurching left due to a lack of suitable control, but climbing slowly for a short distance before crashing into his own gorse hedge.
Most people there said the distance traveled was somewhere between 100 - 150 metres, with the more generous estimates suggesting that Pearse may have flown up to 400 metres. Noone, however had a camera to take photos of the occasion, nor did anyone write down what they saw. The records from the hospital where Pearse was treated for an injured collarbone after the crash were destroyed in a fire, and the one photo taken the next day of the plane stuck at the top of a 12foot high gorse hedge, was later destroyed in a flood. This means there is no certain evidence of what happened that day.