The flight takes a little less than 2 houres and took me right to Tampere Pirkkala airport, where a good friend awaited me.
After breakfast we went to the Tampere Hall to look at the stuff offered at the gunshow.
The place was crowded as usual, but the dealers friendly aswered my questions, kindly translated by ojh.
Then we met Lemmy and Jarmo in the usual place upstairs right across the little exhibition. This year automatic weapons in airplanes were showed, with this canon
beeing the biggest in the display:
I met with some of the finnish Gunboard members too, Bokmal was so kind, to introduce me to a dealer, who got a nice sporting rifle in 9,3x53R
based on an Winchester M1895, which I bought right away(sorry, was to exited to take pictures from it).
After the show we were invited for dinner at the house of a very nice gentleman, a ritired Major of the finnish Army. Smoked raindeer and swedish soldiers pea soup, DELICIUOS!!!!!!!!
After that we took off to Helsinki.
Next morning my fist task was to get to this place:
Helsinki is a very nice city, nearly all interesting places in the citycenter can be reached by walking, but also there are buses and trams and the metro.
Weather was fine, at daytime around –5°C, at night around –10°C.
Mostly it was sunny but the wind from the baltic sea was chilling somewhat..
I walked the city and later at monday I went by bus to the Helsinki airport, where the Aviation Museum is located. Nice displays of planes well restored and preserved.
One emloyee of the museum was so kind, to help me as a tour guide.
When it was about closing time of the museum, Lemmy came to take me to one of his collector friends to show me a OUTSTANDING collection of weapons.
Let’s begin with the experimental and targetguns based on Mausers:
Some nice huntingrifles and commercial rifles of various makers and chamberings:
A pile of m/91 rifles, just no storage space left in the racks:
A fine selction of submaschineguns:
And even some more SMG:
Some nice sowjet pistols of more recent make, and YES the APS is still functioning as disigned:
Touching the guns an inspecting them was also alowed:
Finaly I took some pictures of differend versions of finnish Mosin Nagant Training rifles for my reseach on them:
One would have needed WEEKS to see everything in that collection in detail.
My jaw dropped to the floor several times
Inbetween we had dinner to calm me down somewhat, delicious Karelian Pie
Next day I met up with Mestari at Sotamuseo.
Very nice displays there, but the lighting is not so good for pictures, everything is behind glass, so no playing with the nice toys there. Made only a few pictures:
More modern stuff:
The afternoon I spent with ojh on an indoorrage, had a great time there punching some papertargets. Sadly he would not like to sell me his highly accurate Margolin pistol.
To my big sourprise quit a lot of ladies also enjoyed shooting there.
After that I did something for my adjucation and visited the finnish National Museum.
Beginning from the stoneage the settlement in Finnland is nicely shown there, in the basement a small armory shows a selection of real old weapons.
Also Lemmys throne is shown there:
Also a view into an old farmhouse can be taken:
Next day I expanted my knowledge again by visiting the Technical Museum.
Quite impressive, the first NOKIA pohne was shown the, modell “Pigeon”:
I could not talk them out of that nice VALMET tractor:
After that I met with ojh again at the shop of ASETEKNO and we had a little talk with the owner Mr. Vottonen.
Than we went up north of Helsinki to another nice gentleman, an retired Artillery Officer to have a look at some pistols, he had for sale.
Made a nice deal there and learnd a lot of very good jokes, so Finnish Army must be a funny place to serve in
We also visited the SA-shop at Hämeenlinna, it was open for the last day for an uncertain time to come, got me some spare parts and finaly broke down to buy a m/39 bayonette.
I was also invited to ojh’s place for dinner(I LOVE Karelien Pie!!!!!!!!!!!) and have a look at his fine collection of highly accurate matchweapons.
At the last full day of my journey it got by train to Riihimäki to visit the huntingmuseum for taking of some more pictures for my researchwork.
I had the honor to be invited by the Chief Curator to have alook at the weaponchamber of the museum containing a HUGE assortment of huntingrifles and the SAKO factory collection.
He wants to present those weapons to the public, as soon as new showrooms are available.
As a small preview a straightpull shotgun made from an SVT40:
After having a warm cup of coffe we went to see what new canons a good friend found last year and I had a ride on one:
The evening I spent at Lemmys basement, again looking at nice guns and having some beer.
I enjoyed the tip very much, learned a lot of important things and met some very interesting people.
Chris
