The autumn season for the Tuesday Club kicked off

Suomeksi

The Tuesday club summer break ended on August 30th,2022, when club members gathered at the Finnish Aviation Museum to continue the projects left from the spring and begin a few new ones. The restoration of VL Myrsky II (MY-14) went on through the summer apart from a few weeks’ break.

The Caudron C.59 conservation goes forward amongst other things with getting the fabric covering of the lower wings ready and repairing the leading edge damage, covering the bare horizontal stabilizer and one of the elevators, and the refurbishment the 1920s aircraft wheels, which were obtained from the Air Force Museum. The Caudron’s fuselage, which had been under refurbishment at the Tuesday Club was returned to the Päijänne-Tavastia Aviation Museum at Vesivehmaa on August 30th to wait for a time when the conservation of the badly crackled paintwork of the fuselage can be fully attended to.

When the MiG-21BIS (MG-111) was dismantled on the yard of the Finnish Aviation Museum to be scrapped, Aviation Museum Society salvaged the cut-off cockpit part of the fuselage to be built as a MiG-21 simulator. The task of the Tuesday Club is to dismantle the gadgets and equipment outside the cockpit to make space for the simulator hardware. We started this work already at the end of the spring, and now we will continue to prepare the part of the fuselage with the MG-111 cockpit to be made into a simulator.

In 2018 Aviation Museum Society salvaged from being scrapped the fuselage of DO-5, an ex- Air Force DC-3 (C-47). The fuselage had last served with the parachute training school at Utti as a ground instruction device. The work of the Tuesday Club is to repair and tidy the cockpit, which is rather dilapidated and lacking equipment, seal the cockpit windows and renew the cabin widows, now opaque.

The Caravelle III (SE-DAF), acquired by Aviation Museum Society from Sweden, arrived on Friday August 19th from Arlanda to Turku and was taken to be refurbished into a harbour hangar in Pansio. At its time, the aircraft will be on display in Finnair colours by the terminal building at Turku Airport. Finnair used Caravelle III aircraft before changing into Super Caravelles.

The aircraft had stood by the side of Arlanda Airport since 1974 and was in a bad shape, as could be expected.  The task for the Tuesday Club is to repair those damaged parts that for their size are suitable to be repaired in the repair shop of the Finnish Aviation Museum. These include, amongst other things, the somewhat damaged leading edge of the right wingtip. We also restored the Caravelle III tow bar, brought to Turku with the Caravelle, which was in a poor condition.

As usual, many other tasks will appear during the autumn season for the Tuesday Club to do, for the benefit of the Aviation Museum as well as the Aviation Museum Society.

Photos: Lassi Karivalo

Translation: Matti Liuskallio.