10/31/2023. Remarks by Johan Visschedijk: "William Hawley Bowlus and Ted Nelson founded the Nelson Aircraft Corporation at San Leandro, near Oakland, California in 1945, with the intention to produce a two-seat, motor glider, based on the single-seat Bowlus BA-100 Baby Albatross glider, that first flew in April 1938.

For the motor glider, initially nicknamed Bumblebee, Bowlus and Nelson retained the basic Baby Albatross design but significantly widened the cockpit for side-by-side seating. It was fitted with a steerable nose landing gear, additional vertical fins on the ends of the horizontal stabilizer, a hinged canopy, and flight controls for each occupant. It featured a molded plywood fuselage pod, aluminum tube tail boom and strut-braced wooden wing.

Powered by a 25 hp Nelson H-44 four-cylinder two-stroke engine, driving a small two-bladed wooden propeller, the aircraft was first flown in 1946. The type was advertised by the name Dragonfly, however, only seven were built. Despite a good concept, the first auxiliary-powered glider produced in the USA didn't perform well, while the mahogany layer-molding was labor-intensive, thus expensive.

The pictured aircraft was registered to Nelson Aircraft as NC34922 in 1946. It was sold to the well-known designer, homebuilder and historian Peter Bowers. On May 22, 1952, it was registered to Bruce Blauman of Seatle, Washington, by which time its engine had been removed and it had been converted to a glider. (Most of the seven Dragonflys built were converted to engineless gliders.).

On May 26, 1956 it was sold to Airplane Supply Centre in Canada. Subsequently it was sold to Val Hinch of Victoria, British Columbia, who carried out necessary work to license the aircraft and who flew it on Vancouver Island in the early 1960s. After many years in storage, it was finally donated in 1983 by Val Hinch to The Canadian Museum of Flight at Langley Regional Airport. In Canada the aircraft had been registered as CF-IDB and as CF-VFA."