Early Pictures

This is our plane which was delivered by air to Pennsylvania by Lloyd O. Yost. It is pictured when owned by first owner Fred Nelson who based the plane at Middletown Air Intermediate Depot, now Harrisburg International.

The picture was taken while the plane was marked, in water color paint, with temporary number 1184, issued in April, 1927. The permanent license number C3391 was issued November 7, 1927.
The plane is powered by a 90 HP OX-5engine made in December, 1918.


The 75 employees of Advance Aircraft Co,who built this plane. This picture was taken Saturday June 26, 1926. C3391 was delivered either June 20th or 30th. This crew could build 1 Waco NINE each day.In 1926 they built about 175 planes.
The Waco NINE was the first commercially successful U.S. light plane with 283 NINEs built in 2 years from mid 1925 to mid 1927.

The NINE was replaced with the enhancedmodel Ten. It featured a better landing gear, wing center section, passenger door,elevator trim, 4 ailerons, and cowled motor.


No wasted space in this plant. These guys are makingAirplanes. This picture and the one to the right weretaken Monday June, 28th. The fellow in the dirty coveralls is wearing Lee Aviation Union-Alls.
Note the simple construction of the welded fuselage. Virtually all of the diagonal bracing is done with hardwire loops and turnbuckles, which are still tight after 1100 hours and 80+ years. There is no headrest on theNINE and the padding around the cockpit is coveredwith leatherette, an early fake leather like they used the later Model A Fords. You can also see the shock cords for the full swivel tail skid, a true tail dragger.

Not as crowded as the fuselage assembly area, this is thewing department. The wing in the front is an upper left.Only the upper wings are cut out for ailerons. They’rebeing built to the right behind the big band saw. With4 wings per ship and a booming business in spares, youneed to be making a lot of wings.
After assembling the ribs, the edges of the gussets arecleaned up on the belt sander just back from the bandsaw. The last rib before the tip is a very strong rib of heavy spruce. There’s one by the window to the left.
The suited fellow near the back is Paul Walton. Hestarted making ribs in 1924 and also made some ofthe first drawings of the NINE in December 1926.