Restoration of the Snoopy's fuselage continues

Suomeksi

The fuselage of the OH-XEA “Snoopy” has been stored at the Finnish Aviation Museum since its restoration was put to hold in December. Now the fuselage has been transferred to the premises rented by the Aviation Museum Society at Puusepäntie in Tuusula, and it is possible to carry on with the restoration work. Although we couldn’t yet fully concentrate on the restoration projects, because the Tuesday Club’s workshop had yet to be fully refurbished. However, we were able to start the restoration work along with finishing the refurbishing of the workshop.

We carried on with restoring the Snoopy with attaching instruments in its empty instrument panel. The lacking instruments have now been installed. The missing instruments could be seen in a photograph of the Snoopy’s instrument panel from 1969. We are grateful to the people at Turku Flying Club, who rustled up most of the instruments in the panel. We also thank the Finnish Aviation Museum for providing us with the rest of the missing instruments.

Kuva: Esko Keskinen

In completing the instrument panel, the one instrument giving us the biggest problems was the Russian air speed indicator, because it lacked the mounting ring fastened on the instrument. Well, we managed to install the instrument with a clamp around it. We were able to fasten the instrument with four angle irons under the clamp.

Because we didn’t want to leave empty the opening at the centre of the lower part of the instrument panel, we stuck temporarily a digital thermometer there. That’s to say, we don’t know which instrument there was originally, because that instrument is lacking from the photo at our disposal. Furthermore we put two switches we bought from Motonet into the two empty holes in the instrument panel. They don’t resemble the earlier ones with longer stems in the Snoopy’s instrument panel, but we’ll let them stay there for the time being. Of course, we’ll be trying to find switches like the original ones to be installed into the instrument panel.

Kuva: Jouni Ripatti

The Snoopy’s metal fuselage frame was completed for covering at the end of 2024. So, we have started covering the fuselage frame with the vertical stabilizer, which is an integral part of the fuselage frame. We made at first a cardboard template of the stabilizer. Cotton fabric was spread over the template and a piece of fabric, a bit larger than the edges of the cardboard template, was cut off.

The fabric was cut to oversize with intention, to leave adjustment allowance, when cutting the fabric to a tight fit.
The cut fabric was laid tentatively on the vertical stabilizer so that the lapels were left outside the trailing edge. We spread NC-Speed nitrocellulose lacquer to the stabilizer’s leading edge and pressed the fabric tightly against it. This way we managed to glue the fabric to the stabilizer’s leading edge, allowing the lapels to be glued with lacquer to the trailing edge of the stabilizer.

All the more, we wanted to check the tightening properties of the fabric we were using. So we attached a piece of fabric with a stapler to a wooden framework and started tightening the fabric with nitrocellulose lacquer. After two layers of 25% lacquer, we spread a layer of 50% nitro lacquer. After applying these layers of lacquer, the fabric began to tighten in a way we’d hoped, i.e. shrink to resemble a drum top. The final tightness will be found out when we’ll get to using the 100% NC Speed nitrocellulose lacquer.

The Snoopy’s fuselage frame came to us without the cockpit plexiglass panes and the windscreen. The new plexiglass panes of the left-hand side of the cockpit and the right-hand side door pane were acquired and cut to form already towards the end of last year. They were made of 3 mm thick polycarbonate plexiglass. A cardboard template was made of the missing cockpit windscreen, and a plexiglass blank will be cut according to the template. The plexiglass sheet will be bent to the right shape by heating, so that both sides of the windscreen nestle tightly to the front sides of the cockpit. So far we haven’t tried this kind of plexiglass shaping by heating, but we are confident of making it a success.

Photos by Lassi Karivalo except if otherwise mentioned.

Translation to English by Matti Liuskallio.