Tuesday Club goes on summer break - but not quite

Suomeksi

The Tuesday Club’s spring season, filled with work, ended on May 28th. The activities will start again on August 13th. The main work items during the spring season have been the restoration of VL Myrsky II (MY-14), the final phases in restoring the I.V.L.K.1 Kurki and returning it to Vesivehmaa and the repair work on helicopter SM-1’s (HK-1) broken rotor blades. The new project, started in late spring, was the restoration work of the training plane Caudron C.59. In addition to the actual restoration projects, the Tuesday Club team has been involved in many other useful activities.

Building Myrsky’s wings was the most demanding of Tuesday Club’s work items this spring. Now the work is at the phase where the covering of the lower side of Myrsky’s starboard wing is on the way. Before that the equipment inside the wing has been installed, the ribs on the trailing edge have been attached on the rear spar and, most importantly, the operation bars for the aileron, spoiler and landing gear have been assembled through the trailing edge ribs. The team is getting ready to assemble the trailing edge ribs on the port wing. Building the wing has involved also making dozens of inspection, maintenance and operation hatches on the wing and making the hatches for the wheel wells. Myrsky’s horizontal and vertical stabilizers have been covered. Bending the aluminum sheets to form the upper part of the engine’s NACA-ring was a demanding task.

The title of this blog lets you know that, in spite of the summer break, the Tuesday Club team is busy in the restoration space of the Finnish Aviation Museum. The Myrsky-project will continue during the summer, maybe with just a short break. The team is aiming to have the Myrsky MY-14 ready by 2021, at the latest.

In May the Tuesday Club’s three years of work on the IVLK1 Kurki came to an end when the restoration work was completed, and the plane was returned to the Päijänne-Tavastia Aviation Museum in Vesivehmaa. The Tuesday Club Team was delighted to see Kurki on display in the museum hall. To fit the whole plane there was a little challenging and a matter of inches, but now it is there for the visitors to see.

Two broken rotor blades of the SM-1/Mil Mi-1 helicopter (HK-1) have been under repair since the beginning of this year. The damages in the blade structures have been repaired. The damaged areas in the fabric covering were dismantled and they have been covered with new fabric. Now the new covering is waiting for the treatment with shrinking dope and painting.

The new work item started in late spring is the restoration and repair work of the damaged Caudron C.59 training plane CA-50, which was used by the Finnish Air Force in the 1920’s. The work will take about three years and all damages will be repaired and the intact surfaces and structures will be conserved. The work was started at the horizontal stabilizer and elevators.

Photo: Juha Veijalainen

In addition to the restoration and repair projects of museum airplanes, the Tuesday Club has also been working on many other things. The Hawk Experience Center was improved by adding six metal cupboards and several hooks for cargo straps. Two passenger airplane cabin service trolleys were fixed to be used at the Experience Center. Six metal shelves were assembled for the Päijänne-Tavastia Aviation Museum, to be used in the storage containers outside the museum.

In addition to all this, the Tuesday Club team built six money collection boxes for the New Aviation Museum fund raising campaign of the Finnish Aviation Museum.

Photos: Lassi Karivalo except if separately otherwise mentioned.

Translation from Finnish to English: Erja Reinikainen.