Myrsky?s test wing is built to be wing for MY-5

Tiistai 22.12.2020 - Tuesday Club member


Suomeksi

During the corona virus pandemic, the work in the Tuesday Club has concentrated on the restoration of VL Myrsky II (MY-14) and the number of workers has been limited to only a few at a time. The finalisation of the Myrsky-project’s test wing has been on a break. Now both wing halves of the MY-14 are in the undercoat painting phase and carpenters are available for other work. The team decided to continue building the test wing and to get it ready.

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The test wing is the root section, 2.5 meters long, of the Myrsky’s starboard wing, which was built to test and model the construction of the actual wing for the Myrsky. The main emphasis was on testing how the landing gear area is built, and the landing gear installed. Testing was useful because the original drawings were inadequate and inconsistent and several times it was necessary to discuss how to proceed. Sometimes the built section had to be dismantled. Due to the test wing the mistakes were not repeated when the actual Myrsky wing was built.

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The test wing will be useful also in the future. Originally the aim was to place the test wing on display at the museum as an example of a wooden wing structure in a WWII fighter, designed by the State Aircraft Factory. This is why the upper surface of the wing will be partly covered with transparent plexiglass so that the interesting inner structures and equipment can be seen.

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The saying goes that the appetite grows while you are eating, and this is what happened with the test wing. A fuselage frame of Myrsky MY-5, in poor condition, is available for the test assembly of the MY-14 wing. The Tuesday Club team decided to restore this fuselage frame so that it could be placed on display with the test wing assembled on it. Then the museum visitors could see the mixed-structure Myrsky, having a fuselage frame made of steel tube and the wooden root part of the starboard wing. The MY-5 fuselage frame has already been restored, but it has been cut behind the cockpit and is now waiting for the test assembly of the MY-14 wing

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But the appetite kept on growing. The team decided to build a 1.0-meter section of the Myrsky’s port wing to go with the 2.5-meter section of the starboard wing. The port wing section includes the wheel well of the landing gear. Neither of the wing sections is ready but they have been joined with a steel plate and the preliminary wing assembly for the MY-5 can already be seen. We can start talking about the Myrsky MY-5 wing instead of the test wing, because it has already done its task as the test item in the MY-14 restoration.

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And this is not all yet! The Tuesday Club team is dreaming – when the Myrsky MY-14 restoration has been completed – of continuing with the MY-5 fuselage frame and assembling original parts and equipment, which are available, and building the missing vertical and horizontal stabilizers and elevators. The MY-5 would be a great example for the museum visitor of how the mixed-structure Myrsky has been built. How far the MY-5 fighter will eventually be built and assembled remains to be seen in the future.

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The Tuesday Club team will continue with the construction of the Myrsky’s wing sections, 2.5 m on the starboard side and 1.0 m on the port side. The starboard side section structures are almost ready, and the landing gear has once already been assembled on it. Work continues with the leading edge. The leading edge ribs have now been glued on the front spar. The edge strip connecting the ribs to each other has been glued on the tips of the ribs as well as the battens between the ribs.

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The construction of the wheel well on the port wing section is ongoing. The plywood ring on the upper edge of the wheel well was built from narrow plywood strips which were glued into a pack on a mould. The wheel well cover is fastened on this ring. The wheel well cover will be made from aluminium sheet by metal spinning. For the 2,5 m starboard wing the cover has already been made.

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The wheel well walls are also being covered with plywood. The billets for the walls were cut from 1,2 mm plywood sheet. The billets will be fitted into place and finalised. The short wing section on the port side will not have the landing gear as the longer starboard wing section does, the wheel well will remain empty.

Photos: Lassi Karivalo.

Translation: Erja Reinikainen.

Avainsanat: aviation history, restoration, VL Myrsky, MY-14, MY-5