Coandă graduated as an artillery officer, but he was more interested in the technical problems of flight. In 1905, he built a missile-aeroplane for the Romanian Army. He continued his studies (1907–08) at the Montefiore Institute in Liège, Belgium, where he met Gianni Caproni. In 1908 Coandă returned to Romania to serve as an active officer in the Second Artillery Regiment. His inventor's spirit did not comport well with military discipline and he obtained permission to leave the army, after which he took advantage of his renewed freedom to take a long automobile trip to Isfahan, Teheran, and Tibet.