Inventory and other work on an autumn friday, 19 september 2025

Suomeksi

The Caravelle volunteers in Turku have been busy all autumn with the interior work in the rear cabin, electrical installation and other finishing work as well as improving the outdoor area. This blog, however, concentrates on the activities of a day when the three Team Helsinki/Vantaa/Vihti members were on site. Another blog will be written later about the interior work.

Instruments have been installed into the instrument panel in the cockpit and finally the last item could be added. We don’t have an original autopilot operating panel, but a skilfully made copy was assembled – and it looks great.

Photo: Martti Saarinen

In the cabin new stoppers were tested on the curtain track. They prevent the curtain roller slides from slipping from their track if the curtains are moved. We have some original stoppers, but new ones are needed too. The prototypes of the new stoppers proved to work well, so some additional copies will be made.

We were donated an original Caravelle first class double seat and its refurbishment will be done next spring, before bringing it into the cabin. We have already started with some preparations and planning for the refurbishment. The seat will need mechanical repairs, and new padding and covers need to be made. Now we did some measurements and padding tests for drawing the patterns for new covers.

Photo: Erja Reinikainen

You may remember that a container full of material came from Arlanda along with the aircraft. It has been parked in our storage area at Turku airport since early summer 2023. Another container, located beside the aircraft, has worked as a shed for tools and material needed in the restoration work. Quite a job was done as the contents of the two sea containers were now inventoried and organized. In the organizing work the visiting volunteers were accompanied with two Turku team members.

Photo: Jouni Halme

The container in the storage area still contains some items which were dismantled from the SE-DAF in the summer in 2022, but there is a lot of other material we got from Arlanda, packed in wooden boxes and some loose in the container. At Arlanda the material was inventoried, and the boxes were labelled with texts describing the contents. During the years parts and some cabin textiles have been collected from the boxes and installed in the aircraft. The boxes have also been rummaged through for other purposes.

Now all loose items in the container were checked, the boxes were opened, and an inventory was made of the material we have. The material was sorted into two categories: a) Caravelle parts which may be used in the aircraft or in the exhibition and b) material from other aircraft types which may be sold or placed on display. A real treasure were the six original and well-preserved unused windowpanes (plexiglass) which can be installed in the cabin. Cockpit items were found too, pilot headset and microphones, among others. There is plenty of interesting material for the exhibition, such as the “black box”, refuelling panel, radio equipment and different kinds of tools and small parts.

Photo: Jouni Halme

We also collected all kinds of waste and disposable material from the storage container. This included cargo pallets, timber used in the transportation of the aircraft parts, etc. and material which had corroded or crackled or become brittle during the decades. There were also some textile items which had been dirty, torn or damaged already when they had been packed.

There is plenty of material in the wooden boxes, waiting to be used in the future: e.g. seat covers, seat belts and tray tables which are not from a Caravelle. The boxes were re-labelled and packed into the container so that they are easily accessible.

It is easy to continue from here in the spring.

Translation to English: Erja Reinikainen