Radio Control scale model designs from Finland, www.iwaru.fi
PIK-planes
An new Peanut-scale kit was published some time ago. You can purchase it from
https://www.hobbycenter.fi/iwaru–pik-26-mini-sytky-peanut-scale
It is rather exact scale short kit. I scaled it from my larger plans and made minor adjustements to facilitate smaller size. Kit contains laser-cut balsa parts. No hardware or balsa strips etc. included.
Short story : Time and location is 1947 Finland, Tampere. There was an ambitious and exciting aviation club, Tampereen Ilmailuyhdistys (TIY Ry) seeking good sailplane for their club flying. They set their eyes to WWS.1 Salamander they have seen with their more southern colleagues, PIK. They tried to obtain plans for it but were not so successful. I have read some comments that the plans were too expensive, but who knows.
This small obstacle did not stop TIY. They decided to design an plane inspired by Salamander. And name it as Sisilisko, which is almost directly translated Salamander to finnish. Chief designer was Paavo Järvenpää. Building started same year and was completed 1950. Only one plane was built. Design proved to be great flyer. Fun fact : there is also some links between Salamandra and PIK-5a, but this too long story to put here.
In year 1961, after many flights plane was sold to Jyväskylä. Then after some time it came back. After restoration it spent some time in display at Vapriikki @ Tampere. Then back to storage, Now it is time to take it out of storage and start planning for putting it to display. Again.
I have participated in Pirkanmaa Ilmailuhistoriallinen Seura Ry (PIHIS, Pirkanmaa Aviation Historical Society) projects before (see this then this and finally this). When I heard of this project I knew that I simply must participate it. First step is to get plane out of long term storage. Weather was cold and windy, but plane itself is in good shape. Properly packed in bubble wrap. Which caused some limitations for photography, but still this is great stuff. Actually I had never seen this plane in real life and only seen couple bw-photos of it. So orange colour was real surprise.
We moved plane from one storage to another for further study. I trust that this is really good progress and I am aware of further planning of new location. Hopefully it will find nice home like the PIK-12.
I will keep you updated on further developments, meanwhile some pics below.
Some further reading :
Below is an group of different colouring schemes of PIK-3c Kajava. Pictures are collected from public network sources and their rights belong to their respective owners.
If you feel that keeping these pictures violates your right to these pictures pls. contact me. I will remove picture immediately. However, pls. remember that these are collected from public sources. If you want to add pictures to this page (or photo galleries) pls. contact me. All assistance is welcomed.
The sole purpose of this page is to collect different colouring schemes together. Pictures are also technically manipulated to low resolution rendering their quality extremely low.
I visited Finnish Aviation museum to take photos of their collection of VL planes, ie. planes which have been manufactured by Finnish state aviation factory. I really like this museum and I strongly advise everyone to go there and check their collections. Well worth visit. And nowadays it is really easy to get there due new railway line. It is approx 2 mins from Helsinki-Vantaa airport via taxi or railway. approx 30mins from Helsinki.
I will be posting walkarounds of planes with tag Finnish Aviation Museum. See right pane.
This is just an happy ending to story which started around 2011. I was trying to locate so called ‘Tampere Gabriel’. That is, an PIK-12 Gabriel which was supposed to be around city of Tampere. After searching for an while I contacted good folks of Tampere Aviation History Association (PIHIS Ry in Finnish…). The association’s secretary Samuli Puotila advised that the plane is in deep (and I mean really deep) storage and he will inform me when it is being moved. Year or so passed and then I got email that temporary storage area was located and rescue party will get to deep storage site. That is almost collapsed barn.
I got there and during extremely enjoyable day we rescued that plane under all kinds of garbage. Pics of that day can be found here.
After year or so I got second email. There was promise of more permanent display and the plane needed some scrubbing. So again, I drove approx 200km and enjoyed every moment of hot day scrubbing that lovely old plane to more acceptable state. That day has pics also, they can be found here.
Then time passed again and finally plane found it’s permanent display. In middle of Kuusela senior citizen housing at heart of Tampere. I had no opportunity to assist assembly etc. but couple days ago I finally got time to get pics of her.
And it looks great. It is flying again!
Took some pics. Due somewhat confined space I used fisheye lens (8mm Zuiko F3.5) and as always I got carried away.
I must thank City of Tampere and Pihis Ry for dedication and commitment to restoring and getting this lovely plane up in air again. And allowing me to take part of this endeavor.
Here are couple fantastic pictures from Mikkelin Ilmailuyhdistys (MIY). Translated loosely to Mikkeli Aviation Society. These pics have originated from album of Pentti Pohjanvirta via Sakari Silvennoinen.
I think that these are truly wonderful for many reasons. One of being that they have not been published before this, at least to my knowledge. There is similar (but different) set of pictures of same time period at Mikkeli Airport history pages, but I cannot find link of that as the pages are currently offline. Also, there is not so many building pictures of classic sailplanes in internet, so these are rarities.
Pictures show building of PIK-5b (OH-PAV) and couple flying pictures of PIK-7 Harakka II (H-47 / n.5). You can find new pictures of same planes at iwaru.fi/galleries.html
If you have further information of person / planes in pictures pls. contact us, tuootal (at) iwaru.fi, I will update captions accordingly.
Also, if you have more historical pictures of PIK-range of planes pls. send them to us, we will publish them.
After long, long winter some flying of PIK-15 Hinu.. I did several flights, but these were done by Hannu V. as I had to take photos.
I visited Kiikala Airport with PeeKoo and Wexfly to test out PeeKoo’s PIK-18 Sytky. Weather did not co-operate and blustery winds & snowstorm stopped maiden attempt. But still it looks great.
Hi ya all.
It has been awhile since last post on this blog. I have to admit that I got slightly annoyed by constant bombardment of spammers to this blog site so I shut down all commenting, removed (hundreds) comments selling italian bags and shoes etc. The commercial side of this enterprise has continued with no problems.
We have introduced an number of new designs. Most interesting has to be PIK-26 Mini-Sytky range. The initial one was 33%-sized one which has wingspan of 1.74m. Quickly followed by 50% one with span of 2.60m and 17% one with span of 0.86m. As one clearly can see the original plane was rather small. It was designed by mr. Kai Mellen with first flight performed in 1996. So it is quite new! This particular plane has been built several dozen times in such far-away places like Argentina and in Europe in Germany, Italy etc. Obviously also in Finland where there is 4 planes in registry. The designs are currently in pre-announcement mode, that is the plans are available & orderable, but parts are still being tested and prices calculated for cutting. One thing worth noting with Mini-Sytky-range is that the design is based on original 1:1 plans. We have taken painstaking care to make only minor changes to design so the model aeroplanes are almost identical to original planes. With the exception of size. There is an design blog (in Finnish language) in lennokit.net.
We have also added prices for several new Harakka’s in 33%-range as they are really ready for ordering. Also an new addition to our free plans section is an motor-pod specifically done for 33% Harakkka’s.
One thing which has caused quite a bit of work has been updating of galleries. They are crucial for building scale planes as these planes in general are quite rare and even more rare in global perspective. You can go to an Finnish airport and spot one, but you cannot probably find them elsewhere. I am quite proud to state that currently we have most broad and detailed photo gallery of PIK-range planes anywhere. It is an product of couple years of walking around museums & airports and digging into old barns and sheds. For space constraints I have compressed photos to smaller size, but if you are in need of hi-res pictures pls. contact us. We are happy to share pics of these classic planes.
Continuing to new models. Currently under wraps there are PIK-21 Super-Sytky (yet another sytky-design…) and Valmet L-90 Redigo. There is initial research for VL Myrsky II and we are still trying to locate usable set of PIK-5c plans.
I got finally PIK-18 Sytky finalized. Last thing took me ages. It was to draw makeshift dummy VW-1500-motor from balsa. It is soooo unscale part, but but but.. I can live with it. This plane is now ready for delivery, but it really should be beta-build before first delivery.
Plans
