Bristol Aerospace

Bristol Aerospace is a Canadian aerospace firm located in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

What would become Bristol began in 1914, when two brothers, Jim and Grant MacDonald, moved to Winnipeg and started a sheet metal business. By the late 1920s, air travel had become an important means of transportation, and Winnipeg had become the hub for travel to the booming west. The MacDonalds formed MacDonald Brothers Aircraft Company in 1930, producing sea plane floats under licence from EDO Corporation of New York. Floats continued to be produced by the company into the early 1980s.

During World War II the factory was used for the production of training aircraft, and by war's end had grown to 4,500 employees. At the end of the war, MacDonald became an important repair and overhaul centre for the Canadian Air Force. Their location at the center of the country lowered the average travel cost for aircraft to the factories, as well as providing high-tech jobs in the Canadian mid-west. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s the Company performed depot level inspection and repair for many of Canada's early fighter planes.

In 1954, MacDonald was purchased by the Bristol Aeroplane Company, becoming their Canadian division. They became an important supplier of accessories for jet engines, building the exhaust pipes for the CF-100 Canuck, later becoming the primary maintenance depot for the plane. During the rest of the 50s and 60s, Bristol built on their experience in precision sheet metal work to become a major supplier of hot section components for various engine manufacturers.

In the early 1960s Bristol won the maintenance contract for the CF-100's replacement, the CF-101 Voodoo. This plane had been plagued with problems in the afterburner, and Bristol started a research project into how to correct the issues. Their proposal was accepted and both the Canadian and USAF F-101's were modified by Bristol, roughly doubling the lifetime of the engines. Bristol kept the maintenance contract for the Canadian CF-101's until the last of them were retired in 1984.

In the second half of the 1950s Bristol was selected to build several test rocket airframes for CARDE's ongoing research into high-power solid fuel propellants. After initial research completed in the early 1960s, Bristol started selling a "lightened" version of the test vehicle as the Black Brant for sounding rocket use, and opened the Rockwood Propellant Plant in 1962. As a side effect of this work, Bristol entered a partnership with Aerojet General from the US, and became Bristol Aerojet the same year. This work was later applied in the early 1970s to a new 2.75" (70mm) engine for use in US-standard rocket launchers, leading to the CRV7, which has since become the standard 2.75" rocket in "the west".

In 1967 Bristol was purchased by Rolls-Royce, and renamed to the current Bristol Aerospace. Bristol Aeroplane in England had been absorbed into British Aerospace a few years earlier.

During the 1970s the company continued to be involved in overhaul and maintenance work, and the CRV7 became a major product line. During this time they also developed the Wire Strike Protection System for helicopters, which cuts cables that they might strike while flying close to the ground. These devices can be found on almost all helicopters today, in the form of angular "blades" projecting from the top and bottom of the cabin area. They have become so popular that they are now designed right into most new helicopter designs.

In January 1987, Bristol won the maintenance contract for the Canadian CF-5 fleet, but in 1995 it was decided to remove them from service, and they were given to Bristol to sell off to 3rd parties. A major upgrade service was offered to replace many of the avionics, but it appears no one was interested in this program.

In 1997 Bristol was acquired by Magellan Aerospace, a company formed by merging a number of Canadian and US aerospace firms.

In 1999 Bristol won the contract for SCISAT-1, the first purely-Canadian science satellite since 1971. With its successful launch in 2002, the basic systems have been selected by the Canadian Space Agency as a generic small-satellite "bus", and plans to launch a number over the next decade.