Douglas C-47/DC-3 OH-LCD Lokki's ailerons arrive at the Tuesday Club

Keskiviikko 23.9.2026 - Tuesday Club member

Suomeksi

Those of you who have visited the Finnish Aviation Museum in Vantaa recently and examined the C-47/DC-3 OH-LCD “Lokki” (meaning Seagull), owned by the DC-3 Association and displayed in the museum yard, have probably noticed the poor condition of Lokki’s ailerons. Unfortunately, the same applies to Lokki’s fabric-covered elevators and rudder. All of them are more or less torn. Lokki’s long-term storage outdoors, exposed to the weather, has taken its toll on the fabric-covered ailerons and control surfaces. Especially the right-wing aileron is badly torn and has already been partly patched with duct tape. The root section of the aileron is also damaged.

Photo: Jukka Köresaar

Photo: Jukka Köresaar

Already for some years there has been discussion about refurbishing the ailerons at the Aviation Museum Society’s Tuesday Club. This autumn, contacts between the Tuesday Club and the DC-3 Association gave the matter momentum, and the preliminary discussions led to action. At the beginning of September, Tom Karlsson and Reino Ahola of the DC-3 Association removed the ailerons with the assistance of Tuesday Club members Jukka Köresaar and Heikki Kaakinen. The ailerons were stored in Hall II of the Finnish Aviation Museum, next to the de Havilland Canada Beaver OH-MVL, to await later delivery to the Tuesday Club workshop on Puusepäntie in Tuusula.

Before restoration of the ailerons could begin, the Tuesday Club and the DC-3 Association needed to reach an understanding on how they would be refurbished. To discuss this, Tom Karlsson of the DC-3 Association and Ari Aho and Lassi Karivalo of the Tuesday Club met beside the ailerons at the Finnish Aviation Museum on Wednesday, 16 September. After thorough consideration, they decided that the ailerons would not be covered with fabric in the traditional manner, but with thin aluminium sheets.

The reason for using aluminium sheet covering is that Lokki will continue to be outdoors, exposed to the weather. Once the new aviation museum has been completed, Lokki’s likely new location will be in the Tiira Square, between the new museum and the Clarion Hotel, supported on tall pylons. This solution will, of course, require the City of Vantaa to take a favourable view of the matter and make a decision on the new display site for Lokki. Let us hope for the best!

Fabric-covered ailerons would not withstand the weather’s continuous wear for long. The covering fabric would certainly deteriorate within ten years, and probably sooner. Maintaining Lokki’s ailerons while the aircraft is supported on pylons would also be problematic, and the ailerons would eventually need to be re-covered once again. Aluminium-sheet-covered ailerons, by contrast, would be weather-resistant.

In the case of Lokki’s ailerons, it is more appropriate to speak of refurbishment rather than restoration, because covering them with thin aluminium sheets does not correspond to the original method used on DC-3 ailerons.

Each aileron will be covered with 0,3 mm aluminium sheet. Before the aluminium sheet is fitted, the fabric covering will be removed, including from the leading edge. The internal parts of the ailerons will be inspected, cleaned and repaired as necessary. The removed covering fabric will not be retained. The damaged root section of the right-wing aileron will be repaired before the aileron is covered.

The aluminium sheets will be attached to the aileron ribs, the rear edges of the leading edge structure and the trailing edge with pop rivets, also known as blind rivets. Serrated fabric finishing tapes will be attached over the rows of pop rivets on the aileron ribs to imitate the fabric strips that protect the stitching over the ribs of a fabric-covered aileron.

The surfaces of the ailerons will be painted silver, the same colour as Lokki’s fabric covering.

On Tuesday, 22 September the ailerons of DC-3 Lokki were brought from the Finnish Aviation Museum to the premises rented by Aviation Museum Society Finland on Puusepäntie in Tuusula. The ailerons were moved from Hall II of the museum onto a long transport trailer attached to a passenger car. After all, Lokki’s ailerons are more than seven metres long.

The ailerons were secured with straps to the padded trailer, and the journey towards the Puusepäntie workshop could begin. On arrival at Puusepäntie, the ailerons were carried into a storage container in the yard, equipped with a dehumidifier, to await the start of the refurbishment.

At present, the Tuesday Club’s Puusepäntie workshop is restoring the PIK-21 Super Sytky (OH-XTM), the Snoopy (OH-XEA) and a DC-3 ground power unit, as well as building the Demo-Myrsky. The workshop is therefore already quite cramped. Another limiting factor is the aileron’s length of 7,40 m. As the autumn progresses, we will see when we might be able to begin refurbishing Lokki’s ailerons, perhaps working on them alongside the other projects underway at the Puusepäntie workshop.

Photos: Lassi karivalo, unless otherwise mentioned

Translation to English: Erja Reinikainen