Presentazione 87web eng

‌the graceful character of the SVA that amazed Vienna‌ of singular beauty, like an object of ancient manufacturing, like a lantern by Caparra, like a violin by Andrea Guarnieri.

Happy is the one who has no desires, but only dreams After all, dreaming and flying are not so different activities.

Sometimes it happens that dreaming and flying overlap and intertwine.

Many people cherish a dream in their lives, and so do aviators.

Sometimes dreaming becomes the means to finalize a flight.

However aviators are different from other people, they have trouble in keeping their feet on the ground.

Sometimes flying becomes the means to make a dream come true.

They love dreaming, but more than anything else they love flying.

That’s the way great adventures are often born.

(Paulo Coelho)

That’s the way our challenge was born, too.

Our dream was that of giving new life to the Ansaldo SVA, one of the most famous aircraft of the Italian military aviation during the period that goes from its birth to the Great War, and making it fly again.

In 1918 the SVA overflew Vienna and only a couple of years later it pushed itself so far as to reach Tokyo, overflying places where nobody had ever seen or heard an airplane.

Giorgio Bonato He was born in Nove (Vicenza) on 13th June 1965.

Since he was a child he was always attracted to the world of flight.

As a 10 year-old boy he could model his first free-flying model aircraft all by himself.

Among his idols as a child were well-known authors of building and construction books for children, like John Kaufmann, Rudolf Wollmann and Bruno Ghibaudi.

While growing up, Giorgio improved his technical and building skills and learned the principles of flying by dedicating himself intensely to aircraft modelling at various levels: from control-line models, to gliders with automatic steering, to power model aircraft.

He is a self-taught person with his own philosophy: modelling, experimenting and testing in first person.

His desire to take off and leave the ground grew stronger and stronger and lead him to enrol in a flight school as soon as he could do it.

He got his private pilot’s license in 1988 at Aero Club Vicenza; in 1991 he achieved his extended license, in 1993 the glider pilot’s license, and finally in 2000 also the ultralight rotorcraft license.

In 1985 he became an active member of Club Aviazione Popolare, the Italian EAA Homebuilders chapter, and started to cooperate with the most important groups within the field of restoration and rebuilding of aircraft in Italy. In 2004 he became a co-founder of the Historical Aircraft Group (HAG), an association that rapidly made

its name known as the most important group of historical aircraft enthusiasts, pilots and sympathizers.

His professional activity in the family company “Fusina srl”, founded by his father and later developed thanks to Giorgio’s innate manual skills and his brother Luca’s artistic and commercial talent, gives him the chance to engage and cooperate with important entrepreneurial entities in the field of design and of the Made in Italy fraternity; he completes important works on commission that are displayed in galleries, museums and international private collections, while constantly improving his technical knowledge and expertise.

In 2003 he began his first restoration: a 1942 Stinson L5 successfully completed in 2006.

But then a new story begins…

Alessandro Marangoni He was born in Rovereto (Trento) on 23rd October 1959.

His passion for airplanes and flight arose when he was very young.

He was only twelve when he got closer to static aircraft modelling, by building various war birds of the First and Second World War, and he later devoured all books and movies he could find on that historical period.

As a 14-year-old boy he began to hang out at an aircraft modelling club of his town and measured himself with the first flying models. He then rapidly moved from control-line to remotely controlled model aircraft.

For his 15th birthday he received a motorbike as a present. After a few days he dismantled it completely to understand how it worked: from that moment on he was seized by a passion for motorcycles, cars and everything pushed forward by an engine.

That passion is the same that led him from 2004 to 2008 to run as a professional racing car driver in various European speedways, first with Mazda RX 8, then with Nissan 350Z.

His love for flight did not come to an end, on the contrary: he was more and more attracted by that world.

In 1993 he obtained his pilot’s license in Bolzano. In 2008 in Thiene (Vicenza) he achieved the aerobatic pilot’s certificate.

After the aeronautical licenses it’s airplanes’ turn. He bought a Falco FL8 in 2004, a YAK 52 in 2009 and later a Piper LH 4, an aircraft that reached Italy with the allied invasion of Sicily during World War II and that soon is going to be restored back to its golden past.

Alessandro works in the real estate business for a living.

The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

(Winston Churchill)

In order to face up to the construction, we have retrieved a considerable collection of original drawings and we have carefully examined the original aircraft displayed in Trento, in the Gabriele D’Annunzio Museum near Brescia (called “Il Vittoriale”) and in Alenia (Turin seat), where a two-seat SVA 9 is displayed, a potentially flying unique exemplar with original engine that was retrieved in the USA and then skilfully restored by the Turin branch of GAVS (Gruppo Amici Velivoli Storici), the Italian historic aircraft preservation society.

The history of human flight is unbelievably short and intense, covering a little more than a century and filled with great challenges and successes, enthusiasm and disappointment, passion and drama.

In this scenario the SVA represented a turning point, an ideal bridge between two ages: its thin and translucent wings made of wood and canvas are not so different from those that supported the Flyer’s first bounces or the Bleriot’s flight across the Channel,

but they are inserted in a fuselage that appears to have been conceived and constructed a century later, characterized by elegant and curvy profiles, a refined aerodynamics and the use of a wood covering with a structural function.

The SVA is an object of powerful beauty and bewildering modernity, it seems to have directly come out from the canvas of a Futurism aeropainter.

Not only its appearance is amazing, but also its planning and construction:

they show incredible innovation and technological solutions such as the adoption of a 220 hp engine, oblique struts for the connection of the wing planes, the almost total lack of external bracing wires and the choice of a triangular section in the rear part of the fuselage to improve visibility towards the ground.

Thanks to those solutions the airplane could offer outstanding performances, something that represented a great commercial success for our national aeronautical industry at the time, also in the foreign markets, so much so that in 1928 when its production stopped more than 2000 aircraft had been built.

Nowadays the few surviving SVA are kept in the main Italian museums.

They have been saved from the oblivion that threats much of our historical aviation heritage, only thanks to the legendary aura of the memorable feats imagined and wanted by Gabriele D’Annunzio, during which those biplanes were employed.

However, none of those aircraft can fly.

Our dream is to rebuild this wonderful aircraft and make it fly again.

Giorgio Bonato Alessandro Marangoni

There are moments when art attains almost to the dignity of manual labour.

(Oscar Wilde)

We have been engaging in a very careful historical research that started some years ago and still continues; thanks to this research we were able to collect and sort out a huge amount of references, materials and information and to trace the original tables of the project developed by Savoia and Verduzio in the years 1917 – 1920.

We have admired, studied and analyzed those drawings on the yellowed paper, trying to seize the extraordinary attention, mastery and talent, but also the dedication and exceptional manual skills of those men who lived a hundred years ago.

Authentic and uncommon qualities that we identify as peculiar of the celebrated Made in Italy.

You can’t understand, if you like it call it… emotion…

(Lucio Battisti)

It’s finally time to make those dreams come true.

By using the same materials, with the same building and manual processing techniques, but above all with the same passion of that time, we are going to build three new reproductions of SVA 9, the two-seat version.

We are going to make them fly again, while giving new life to the emotion and spirit of the “87a Squadriglia Serenissima” (Venice-based 87th Squadron).

Perfumes, sounds, and colours correspond.

(Charles Baudelaire)

Our laboratories are filled with the odor of wood and glue, of oil and petrol; the first ribs come to light, together with spars, ring frames and parts of the fuselage.

Very soon the curvy, almost feminine silhouette of the SVA will show again beautifully.

Donec ad metam (Gabriele D’Annunzio)

The 87a Squadriglia “La Serenissima”, a dedicated aerial reconnaissance unit, was officially established on 12th January 1918 in the Ponte San Pietro airfield, in the province of Bergamo. It was later moved to San Pelagio, near Padua, and it became the protagonist of the famous “Flight over Vienna”, with six single-seat biplanes SVA 5 piloted by Giordano Granzarolo, Gino Allegri, Antonio Locatelli, Pietro Massoni, Aldo Finzi, Giuseppe Sarti e Ludovico Censi, and the SVA 9 piloted by Natale Palli with Gabriele D’Annunzio on board.

The squadron was dissolved on 15th August 1943 and was never re-established.

On January 2013, 95 years later, the 87a Squadriglia has now become re-established through a written act.

Why should an historical flight unit inspire a cultural association today?

Surely not for a nostalgic ideology, nor for a mere exaltation and celebration, but rather to properly communicate and represent the passion and the endeavours of men who rose to the challenge, overcoming with their own resources limits that up to then were considered inconceivable. Men who became the undisputed protagonists of that period thanks to their determination and their spirit, ahead of their time and maybe ahead of our time too.

The charter members of the association 87a Squadriglia SVA are: Stefano Azzolin, architect, Ultralight pilot Giuliano Basso, architect and graphic designer Giorgio Bonato, artisan, pilot, collector and restorer in the aeronautical field Alessandro Marangoni, entrepreneur, pilot, historical aircraft collector Antonio Vidale, electrical engineer, IT manager, Web and Apps developer Stefano Micheli, business consultant, pilot

We have three ambitious objectives for the five years to come: Support the SVA project and take care of its divulgation; Complete the soon-to-be ROMATOKYOHANGARMVSEVM, which is about to be opened within the Aeroporto Arturo Ferrarin in Thiene (Vicenza) as the base of operations, seat of a collection of historical aircraft and permanent seat of the association and its activities; Promote and plan the project “Volo su Vienna 2018” (Flight over Vienna 2018) and lay the foundations for the “Raid Tokio-Roma 2020”.

The Flight over Vienna will start from Trento, base of operations of Alessandro Marangoni; after flying over Thiene (seat of the 87th Squadron) it will head for Castello di San Pelagio and then proceed along the original route followed by the eight aircraft on 9th August 1918.

After dropping the pamphlets, instead of heading back home the aircraft will land in Vienna to participate in the events organized locally.

On the back route the squadron will repeat the passage over Venice, during which D’Annunzio launched his greeting message to “La Serenissima”(Republic of Venice)

The raid Rome-Tokyo will be carried on backwards, starting from Japan and with different stopovers towards Italy, following a route that will need to take into account the current geopolitical situation of the overflown countries and territories.

The formal part of the flight will be completed with the arrival in Rome, but the real highlight of the event will be the last route segment from Rome to Thiene, native town of Arturo Ferrarin.

There the aircraft – called “Il Moro” (“the dark haired”) as Arturo Ferrarin was called – will finally reach its home, the hangar-museum entitled to it and built by Giorgio Bonato at the edge of the grass airfield.

The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.

(Antoine de Saint Exupery)

The new ROMATOKYOHANGAR MVSEVM (RTHM) within the Arturo Ferrarin Airport in Thiene (LIDH) has been completed and is almost ready for inauguration; it will be the base of operations of the historical aircraft collection of Giorgio Bonato, and seat of the 87a Squadriglia.

The building architecture has been conceived to permanently host the historical aircraft in flight conditions, the archives and the library of the association and to accommodate in various periods of the year laboratory activities, exhibitions, meetings and public or private workshop linked to the world of flight but not exclusively.

suis viribus pollens (Gabriele D’Annunzio)

The amount of symbols, mottos and logotypes conceived by D’Annunzio and the myriad of motifs recalling the theme of flight and aviation on stamps, postcards and advertisement of that period are impressive and constitute a bulk of material with an extreme graphic force and modernity.

The intention of the association “87a� is that of selecting, modernize and popularize that material through a global project of integrated communication, that can include wide promotion and visual-contemporary areas starting from the new built SVA livery.

SVA project

The SVA project, launched by the constructors and pilots Giorgio Bonato and Alessandro Marangoni, foresees the construction of three flying reproductions of the two-seat SVA 9.

We are not talking about restored aircraft, nor about reproductions in reviewed scale, rather about three aircraft rebuilt from scratch, that will differ from the originals 첫in the engine, the equipment and instrumentation, as imposed by the current legislation.

The objective is to permanently have two aircraft flying and a third backup aircraft available.

This project was born from a private initiative and is characterized by in-depth historical and technical research, made possible thanks to the retrieving and digitalization of the original projects for the SVA, the examining and photographic survey of the original single-seat aircraft kept at Museo Caproni of Trento and at Vittoriale and of the unique two-seat version found in the USA, masterly restored

by GAVS and now displayed at Alenia in Turin.

Not only did the research concentrate on the recovering of essential sources and technical references, but it also expanded to the collection of documents, accounts and reports about the aircraft and to a direct contact with the heirs of the pilots protagonist of the SVA endeavours.

The recently started construction, consistent with the current regulation and under the technical supervision of Italian Homebuilders Club (F-CAP), foresees as a first step the setting-up of a mock fuselage in scale 1:1.

This mock fuselage will not be made in aeronautical material, but in a way to evaluate if the planning decisions are coherent; the planning has been carried out taking advantage of 3D modelling and Cad/Cam programs to verify the compatibility of all components, systems and instruments. Once this facilitating role has been carried out, the mock-up could be completed and possibly used for static display. Simultaneously, the jigs and all the necessary equipment for the construction of the semi-finished products

and of the hundreds of parts constituting the “new SVA” are being completed.

The three flying reproductions will be made of the same materials of the original SVA, respecting and where possible improving the construction procedures of 1907.

The adoption of a six cylinder LOM engine of Czech production, similar in dimensions and structure to the original Spa 6A 220hp, will allow to maintain the linear shape of the exhaust pipes without changing the characteristic lines of the SVA.

Every single detail is going to be faithfully reproduced, and livery, colours and heraldry are not going to be left out. Some symbols as the IBIS, associated to the motto “IBIS REDIBIS” that decorated the canvas wings, the ANSALDO company logo, the commemorative writings about the accomplished missions, the identification numbers are being brought to life again, with the utmost philological respect for the graphic aspects, the style of the characters used and the decoration techniques of that time.

Iterum Rudit Leo

The second project of the reborn “87a”regards the repetition of the two great events conceived

by Gabriele D’Annunzio: the Flight over Vienna and the Rome-Tokyo raid, on the occasion of their hundredth anniversary.

The Flight over Vienna in 1918, with the bloodless launch of thousands of leaflets on the Austrian capital, and the raid Roma Tokio carried out only two years later by Ferrarin during a flight more than 18.000 km long, represented really memorable endeavours. Leaving aside the propaganda of that time

and every patriotic rhetoric, we believe they were also two great modern media events.

The theme of flight enters the collective imagination and shifts from an individual dimension of interest and passion to a universal and popular one.

Flight as a political and demonstrative action to generate interest and consensus.

Flight as a spectacular event and as a mean of mass communication.

From this point of view D’Annunzio represented an absolute creative genius and a marketing guru ahead

of his time, by personally advancing his own role and accomplishments.

D’Annunzio was a pioneer of the most extreme communication trends, he was able to grasp them, to promote them, to impose them.

Even though current communication channels or technologies were not available at the time, he was nevertheless able to celebrate modernity, speed, performance, the overcoming of limits, the thrill of risk and of conquest, the man-machine aesthetic, all themes that represent his time and cultural context, but that are also of current relevance

nowadays, especially in the way we create entertainment and make use of it. The project of repeating the two flights will have to seize this potential and enhance it; thanks to the availability of the most up-to-date technologies it will be possible to enjoy these events live, and these two repeated challenges will become once-in-a-lifetime technical, sport and cultural events.

In August 2018, year of the centenary, we have planned the repetition of the Flight over Vienna.

That is not going to be a nostalgic commemoration of the event,

but rather a mission lead by pilots with historical flightsuit, on SVA of new construction and along the original route.

The Flight over Vienna will represent the highlight of a well-structured program of initiatives and cultural events centred around the centenary.

Thanks to the most up-to date technologies it will be possible to make it a unique media event and share it on the web through mini webcams installed on board and connected worldwide. It will be possible to enjoy the flight together with the pilots, through a live recording and through

augmented reality software.

The flight will give rise to an unprecedented cultural bridge between Italy and Austria, involving the institutions of both countries, the Armed Forces for the overflight and airshows taking place at takeoff and landing, flight operators for the set-up of special charter flights that will travel on the same route, the most important cultural circles for exchange programs, exhibitions and concerts of utmost level (Strauss’ music in Trento and Verdi’s operas in Vienna).

In 2020 it will be Tokyo’s turn.

Almost a century ago Arturo Ferrarin (called “il Moro”) and his engine specialist Capannini took off from Centocelle near Rome and reached Tokyo after and endless and adventurous air raid.

The air raid was widely celebrated and Ferrarin was treated as a hero and appointed samurai.

Then these two adventurers were forced to slip away to Italy on a steamship for political convenience.

Ironically Ferrarin’s name and endeavour are more renowned in Japan than they are in Italy.

The objective of making Ferrarin’s SVA go back from Tokyo to Rome, is that of calling the proper attention on this great pilot born in Thiene (Vicenza) and establish a renewed cultural and commercial bridge between Italy and the Orient.

This challenge will reveal inevitable anachronisms and anomalies, but it will be chance to evoke interest and intense emotions in the contemporary travellers who are more used to covering those distances in a few hours, closed in huge pressurized airplanes at altitudes from which the Earth appears just as a bluish and blurred stretch, and are therefore less and less able to grasp the individual peculiarity of the flight and of the overflown territory.

It is an endeavour that will explore the differences and conflicts between oriental and Mediterranean cultures and that will try to highlight the tremendous changes occurred at global scale in the hundred years passedfrom Ferrarin’s flight.

Well-known personalities of the world of culture, communication, literature, politics, entertainment and sport of the two countries will be hosted on board during each stopover of the raid and will give their multifaceted interpretation of the event so that it can be perceived in all its aspects.

Also in this case it will be possible to follow the event and share the tremendous amount of information in real time through the web, the social networks and the live satellite broadcasting.

An extremely careful media coverage will follow the slow approaching march; this will satisfy the public’s curiosity and anticipation, that will reach its peak at the arrival of the two aircraft in Rome‌ and then there will be only the last stretch between Rome and the grass airfield of Thiene.

Finally Arturo Ferrarin will be at home again!

87a Squadriglia SVA

UNDER THE AEGIS OF

www.87a.it - info@87a.it 87squadriglia-SVA

FONDAZIONE IL VITTORIALE DEGLI ITALIANI

Giorgio Bonato Constructor and Pilot vispofly@alice.it Alessandro Marangoni Constructor and Pilot alessandro87sva@gmail.com Sergio Barlocchetti Media Relation Ilbarlo@yahoo.it

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