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.

Found Serial Number

I found the Construction Number (production Serial Number) while showing the fuselage to my brother in-law Mike Clark. The number 264 was carefully written on the back of the turtle deck former behind the rear cockpit. The font used was the same as that used for the drawing number on some of the oldest drawings. This seems to much of a coincidence not to have been done at the factory. Besides which it's in a very awkward place to do after installing on the plane.

From various letters from the feds to other Waco NINE owners the factory stamped the official Construction Number on the right forward landing gear fitting. That part of the fuselage was cut off and not available for us to find. The number on the former may have just been easier to see during the assembly process at the factory.

In the Beginning

I had planned to build a Hatz Biplane to use for giving rides in the EAA Young Eagles program. I thought kids should get a ride in something more like the barnstormers of the '20s flew. A friend of mine and co-worker, Leon Johenning, suggested that if I wanted a plane which looked like something from the '20s I should build the real thing, a WACO. Drawings were available for the Taperwing, so how much more work would it be to have the real deal? We along with our wives drove 8 hours west to attended the 1994 National WACO Club fly-in in Mount Vernon, Ohio hoping to learn about WACO's. It rained all weekend and only 3 planes attended. Leon wandered over to a nearby airport where a nice cabin WACO was for sale, since there wasn't much else happening. He convinced me to go look and it was lust at first sight. We had just sold our house so I had the money for a down payment and the credit to get a mortgage on the rest. After 360 hours of great fun I sold the VKS-7F to a fellow in Michigan who at the time ran Waco Classic in Battle Creek.

Before I sold the WACO I had attended the 1996 Vintage Chapter 3 Fly-in where I met Morton Lester. He picked numbers badly at the evening banquet so our table was last to get fed. As a result we had time to talk about airplanes and Young Eagles. I enjoyed giving rides in the WACO but still wanted an open cockpit late '20s sort of machine. I had been gathering drawings to build a Straight Wing WACO 10 for the purpose. Leon had been right all along it was as easy to build the real deal as the Hatz. Morton said he had a WACO 10 fuselage which might speed my project. I was delighted to just go take pictures and measurements but he was willing to part with it. Two weeks later we were on his doorstep with a trailer to move the fuselage home.

One look told me this was not a 10 but an older NINE. This was even better. We hauled it home May 18, 1996. It took several years to track the heirs of the last owner to get clear title. We're now rebuilding the plane and plan to use this blog to record what we learn and do through that process. We have also been gathering the records of all WACO NINEs ever registered with the fed's to learn more about the lives and times of these planes.






These are Morton's hangers and museum.










This is what we picked up. The fuselage was cut off by a fellow planning to make an airboat out of it. That's another story. From where he cut it off back everything except instruments is there. The headrest was added after 1929.





The last bay of the fuselage had a piece of fabric with eyelets and was laced on with what look like shoe laces. It looks like it reduced airflow through the fuselage and out the tail. The little things you discover when you have original parts.






We'll be posting only as we actually do things so don't expect daily updates, earning the money to pay for this takes priority.