The Italian Aerospace Information Web
by Aeromedia - corso Giambone 46/18 - 10135 Torino (Italy)
Monthly "Saturdays at the Museum" established at the Caselle Historical Aircraft Exhibition
The visits to the Caselle historical aircraft managed by the Seniores Volunteers have been a resounding success. Leonardo has proposed to institute monthly visits for small organized groups on request. The first "Saturday at the Museum" took place on June 15, 2019. The Volunteers, based largely on their work experience, described the history and the technical characteristics of the exhibited items, while also answering visitors' questions.
As a self-financing solution to cover small but necessary expenses to improve the aircraft exhibition (not refundable by Leonardo), the Volunteers are now accepting offers for promotional material. To this aim Luciano Bertolo has produced the 2020 Volunteers' Calendar, four original posters and thirty postcards. These include photographs of the Ansaldo SVA 9, the FIAT G.91, the AMX SICRAL and the Eurofighter DA3 prototype.
After the second "Saturday at the Museum" on July 13 and the Summer holidays, the historical display has been included in the itinerary of the yearly Leonardo Family Day.
Unfortunately, not long afterwards two disturbing episodes affected the activity of the Seniores Volunteers both in Turin and Caselle. Leonardo began to invite journalists to copy documents, photos and drawings from the Historical Document Centre archive despite this being far from being easily and quickly searchable. In particular, on the 20th October, an Austrian journalist destroyed a number of delicate paper tracings of a pioneer-age aircraft with his portable roller scanner. On November 8, during the "Open Factories" visit (launched by the Piedmont Region) at the Caselle historical aircraft collection, Leonardo prohibited the Seniores from offering promotional material to the visitors, thus eliminating the only way to finance the activity of the Volunteers.
It is worth mentioning that in early 2020, during the explosion of the COVID 19 pandemic with its numerous lock-downs from March 9 onwards, Luciano Bertolo was obliged to discontinue his frequently ignored contributions to the Seniores Volunteer Group.
In the picture: the second "Saturday at the Museum" on July 13, 2019. (Aeromedia)
