Tuesday Club's autumn season 2023 under way

Suomeksi

Tuesday Club members returned from their summer break “back to the lathe” on August 22nd. However, once again it must be noticed that the group working on the VL Myrsky II (MY-14) had the stamina to work with the Myrsky through the summer. As a result of their effort the Myrsky wing is now united with the MY-5 fuselage frame, which we have as a testing fuselage. Thanks to this the wing/fuselage joint covering fairings could be test-fitted.

Along with the Myrsky restoration project, the main project of autumn 2023 is to continue the restoration of Valmet Tuuli III (TL-1), which has been on hold for a number of years. In this project, led by the Finnish Aviation Museum, we’ll be concentrating on the aircraft’s fuselage, whose outer exterior surface we had started to polish clean and shiny already in the autumn season of 2022.

In 2015 and 2016 nearly all parts of the Tuuli II had been dismantled for restoration purposes, including the cockpit instruments and gadgets. For the most part they had also been cleaned. In 2018 these parts were packed in case the Finnish Aviation Museum would have moved at that time to a cargo terminal freed by Finnair. However, that didn’t happen and now we continue in a way from where we were left then.

First we’ll concentrate on the thorough cleaning of the Tuuli cockpit, which was nearly emptied. The cockpit’s inner surfaces and structures will be washed clean, possibly partly with a pressure washer. Simultaneously we’ll start to go through the parts packed in 2018 and cleaning them where cleaning will be necessary. The long-term aim of our work is to assemble the Tuuli for display. It will, however, take a few years before that will happen.

The horizontal stabilizer of the 1920’s Caudron C.59 advanced trainer was refurbished and was fully ready to be covered with fabric already a couple of years ago. Now we’ll start to cover the stabilizer with cotton fabric. However, first we’ll test its tightening properties. For that reason we built a wooden frame, onto which we attached a piece of the acquired fabric. We already made a water tightening test on the fabric by spraying it with water. We will test with lacquer by starting with thinned nitro cellulose lacquer ending up with pure lacquer. The patched lower wings of the Caudron took too much space, so they were moved from the restoration workshop to the I-hall of the Finnish Aviation Museum, to wait for the next work phase.

Photo by Janne Salonen.

We will carry on with work on the C-47 (DO-5) fuselage, Caravelle III (OH-LEA “Bluebird”) and MiG 21 BIS (MG-111) cockpit. Aviation Museum Society’s owned DO-5 and OH-LEA are presently on show in the vicinity of the Turku Airport Terminal, but the cockpit of the MG-111, which will be turned into a cockpit simulator, is at the Finnish Aviation Museum. On top of that, we ‘ll cover the derelict tail boom stabilizers of the Mil Mi-8 (HS-4), situated at the Karelian Aviation Museum.

Of the jobs assigned to the Tuesday Club to refurbish the Caravelle, the repairing of the right-hand wing tip, including the making of the navigation light frames, is still unfinished. There’s also been talk about refurbishing the pilots’ seats into functioning condition at the Tuesday Club. This would necessitate bringing the seats from Turku to Vantaa. Also the making of protective sheaths of fabric or leather for the pitot tubes beneath the nose would be on offer for us.

Photo by Ismo Matinlauri.

During the spring season we worked hard to get the C-47 (DO-5) fuselage, which had been used for training paratroopers for the Defence Forces, ready to be on show at the Turku airshow. Time ran out for us then to do all we planned, and we are going to catch up now with the work, even though the fuselage is in Turku. The most important item on the list will be the making of protective covers for the openings for the horizontal-and vertical stabilizers, to prevent rain water getting into the fuselage. The stabilizers naturally aren’t attached to the fuselage now.

We are also making a lookalike copy of the glide path antenna, which is a part of the ILS (instrument landing system) in the nose of the DO-5. For that we have an original antenna as a model and the stem of a broken antenna.

During last year’s autumn season and the spring season we managed empty the MiG 21 BIS cockpit for it to be transformed into a MiG 21 BIS cockpit simulator. This cockpit section was received by Aviation Museum Society when the aircraft was scrapped by
breaking it to pieces at the Aviation Museum’s yard. A few BIS- jobs were left undone from the spring, like the opening in the rear bulkhead of the cockpit for a fresh air blower, removing a few brackets from the front part of the cockpit and making of the floorboard in the front part. The jobs have already been commenced.

Photos by Lassi Karivalo except if otherwise mentioned.

Translation by Matti Liuskallio.