A carpenter always comes handy...

Sunnuntai 9.4.2017 - Member of Tuesday Club

Suomeksi

The Tuesday Club is known for its conservation and restoration work of museum aircraft. But when needed, its members are also active doing other things. Lately, one such “other thing” has been the Hawk Experience Centre of the Aviation Museum Society.  This movable “mini-museum”, including the cockpit section of a BAe Hawk Mk.51 has been a frequent crowd-raiser at numerous air-shows and exhibitions. In a short time thousands of boys, girls, women and men have experienced their first “cold type” flight in an aircraft still in wide use in air-forces around the world.

But the Hawk Experience Centre is much more than just taking a “flight” in a cockpit-section. At the centre information about the Aviation Museum Society (Finland) and about the activities of all Finnish Aviation Museums is given to a waste number of individuals who might not otherwise get this information. At the Hawk Experience Centre the visitors can also buy article put on sale by the Aviation Museum Society and the different aviation museums. The more the public knows about what the Finnish Aviation Museums are doing and keeping available for their visitors the more likely they are to pay them a visit. Increasing the number of visitors is an important enabler for the continuous development of the activities of the aviation museums.

Blogi_2017-08-00.jpg

The available activities and the equipment of the Hawk Experience Centre are continually refined to provide the visitors a still better experience. This is where the Tuesday Club enters the picture. Its most recent work was the making of the “safe storage/transportation” boxes for the centres three big displays to replace the original cardboard-boxes that were falling apparat.

Blogi_2017-08-01.jpg

Based on measurements of the old cardboard-boxes plans for improved wooden ones were made and drawn. The new boxes are made of two main parts, the bottom one and the top on that can be slid over the bottom one. In this way putting the display into the box and removing it from there was made much easier as you do not have to reach so deeply into the boxes to move the displays. The boxes were made of 6 mm softwood-plywood and pine-laths with the bottom made of 18 mm weatherproofed plywood. The boxes were dimensioned to allow using the original EPS shock-absorbing units in the new boxes.

Blogi_2017-08-02-03.jpg

So, off we went to get the plywood and laths. Once we had them in the workshop it was time to cut them to measure and assemble the parts into boxes gluing together the plywood parts and pine-laths. To be safe and not sorry, the joints were strengthened by stapling using a pneumatic stapler.

Blogi_2017-08-05-06.jpg

Wooden handles were fitted to the ends of the boxes. Support-laths, that also function as fenders when the boxes are stored close together were fitted to the top-and bottom of the long sides of bottom part of the boxes.

Blogi_2017-08-08-09.jpg

With the carpentry done it was time for some finishing touches including painting the boxes. The decision was made to paint the boxes in neutral grey. The grounding was done using white Ferrex-paint and the finishing was done using semi-gloss Futura furnishing-paint. When the paint had dried latches were put in place to keep the top and bottom parts connected.

Blogi_2017-08-10-11.jpg

Even though the boxes were made as “series production” we applied the pre-WWII Rolls Royce quality principles. Thus the top and bottom part of each box ended up not being interchangeable but being pair-specific. To ensure smooth use of the boxes the individual pairs (top/bottom) were marked with paired, one, two and three, dots.

Blogi_2017-08-13-15.jpg

This done, we could insert the EPS shock absorbing material from the old cardboard-boxes into our new wooden ones and then take the new boxes from the restauration shop to the Hawk Experience Centre in the yard of the Finnish Aviation Museum.

Blogi_2017-08-17.jpg

There the displays were put into the new boxes, one after another to await their next use at the Hawk Experience Centre at some yet to be held fair or aviation show.

But the experience-centre is much more than just taking a “flight” in a cockpit-section. At the centre information about the Aviation Museum Society (Finland) and about the activities of all Finnish Aviation Museums is given to a waste number of individuals who might not otherwise get this information. At the Hawk experience-centre the visitors can also buy article put on sale by the Aviation Museum Society and the different aviation museums. The more the public knows about what the Finnish Aviation Museums are doing and keeping available for their visitors the more likely they are to pay them a visit. Increasing the number of visitors is an important enabler for the continuous development of the activities of the aviation museums.

Avainsanat: Hawk Experience Centre, info monitor, storage box, the Tuesday Club