"AOPA Pilot" Magazine January 1993

The Bellanca Way

by, Mark R. Twombley

Photography by Mike Fizer

The following excerpts are from a follow-up article written by Mark Twombley... Tom


"Forty years ago, a group of business and civic leaders from the small Minnesota lake region town of Alexandria (where some believe the Vikings roamed long before Christopher Columbus arrived in the new world) sought to boost the local economy by bringing some manufacturing activity to town. That activity turned out to be building Bellanca Cruisemasters."

"Tooling and parts were shipped from New Castle, Delaware, where Guiseppe Bellanca had originally established his factory. A shop was set up in a former creamery in town. Essentially, it was a woodworking shop where the wings, flaps, and ailerons were built."

"It's still done pretty much the same way today at Bellanca, Incorporated...The wings, flaps, and ailerons still are painstakingly built by hand in the same old creamery, then loaded onto a trailer and hauled the few miles to the airport."

"When you walk through the side door into the wing shop, it's like passing back through time. Some of Guiseppe Bellanca's original tooling is still used to piece together wing ribs, and stacks of Sitka spruce planks stand ready for the laminating process that will turn them into wing spars."

"The Super Viking's wing is a work of industrial art. Each side is composed of an estimated 1,800 pieces of wood, each one stamped with a part number and shaped and glued to take its exact place in the intricate structure."

"The wing begins to take shape when nose ribs are attached to the front spar and tail ribs are attached to the rear spar. The two spars then go into a master jig where the middle ribs are attached. Aluminum fuel tanks, fuel and hydraulic lines, wires for lights, and antennas are installed. The plywood leading edge, shaped by steaming, is fitted, and the entire wing is skinned in mahogany plywood. A sealer is applied."

"The plywood is in turn covered with Dacron cloth, and 16 to 18 separate finish coats of dope and paint are applied. The finished wing, which has taken about three weeks for two men to assemble, weighs about 500 pounds total---250 pounds a side."

"At the factory, the steel-tube fuselage is welded together and the fabric ironed on to shrink it to size before the doping process begins. Each side of the wing is bolted to a tubular steel fuselage carry-through structure. There are two attach bolts in the forward spar, two in the rear spar. About 85 percent of the individual pieces and parts that go into the airplane are made by Bellanca. It takes the company an estimated 3,600 man-hours to build a Super Viking."

"Bellanca doesn't cut a wide swath in corporate America, but it upholds a proud tradition of building fine airplanes."




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