{"id":18486,"date":"2021-06-08T07:00:16","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/08\/tank-driving-in-finland-piglet-and-the-t55\/"},"modified":"2021-10-04T06:59:20","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T11:59:20","slug":"tank-driving-in-finland-piglet-and-the-t55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/08\/tank-driving-in-finland-piglet-and-the-t55\/","title":{"rendered":"Tank Driving in Finland: Piglet and the T55"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"youtubomatic-video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gqlGnKX73nE?controls=1\" width=\"580\" height=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons\/home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons\/home<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! <a href=\"http:\/\/shop.forgottenweapons.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/shop.forgottenweapons.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>We were going to have a couple serious military vehicles as range props for Finnish Brutality back in February, but with the match postponed because of covid restrictions that didn&#8217;t come to pass. However, Jari (CEO of Varusteleka) and I were not going to let that stop us from having a bit of fun! So we headed out to Mil-Safarit.com in Pornainen (about 50km northeast of Helsinki) to get some driving lessons.<\/p>\n<p>First up, the &#8220;Nasu&#8221;. That is an abbreviation for Nauha-Sisu, but it also translates as &#8220;Piglet&#8221; (just like the Winnie the Pooh character) and that&#8217;s what it is called by troops in service. It&#8217;s a light tracked utility vehicle with a really neat steering system. The vehicle consists of a front driver&#8217;s compartment and a rear cargo section, each in an independent set of tracks. A flexible drive shaft connects the two, along with a pair of hydraulic cylinders that bend the two sections side to side. That is how it steers; by being the vehicle in the middle &#8211; the tracks are always turning at equal speeds. It&#8217;s a very effective and reliable vehicle, used to haul pretty much anything, as well as towing trains of infantry on skis.<\/p>\n<p>Jari had experience driving these in the service, but it was a pretty neat new experience for me. The steering definitely took some getting used to, but it will pretty much go anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>Next up was the real star, a Polish T55 (the Finnish military used Soviet T55s for a while). This beast weighs in at about 40 tons, powered by a 39-liter V12 Diesel engine. It has a 5-speed manual transmission, and hydraulic-assisted steering levers. It was intimidating at first (and still at the end, if I am to be honest), but actually not that hard to drive once I squeezed myself into the driver&#8217;s compartment. And a tremendous amount of fun!<\/p>\n<p>We will have either these vehicles or something comparable at the rescheduled Finnish Brutality: Continuation War match in October 2021. Thanks to Varusteleka for setting this little excursion up, and to Mil-Safarit.com for not sending me straight to the gulag after I drove their tank into a ditch!<\/p>\n<p>www.Varusteleka.com<br \/>\nwww.Mil-Safarit.com<\/p>\n<p>Contact:<br \/>\nForgotten Weapons<br \/>\n6281 N. Oracle 36270<br \/>\nTucson, AZ 85740<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>http:\/\/www.patreon.com\/ForgottenWeapons https:\/\/www.floatplane.com\/channel\/ForgottenWeapons\/home Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http:\/\/shop.forgottenweapons.com We were going to have a couple serious military vehicles as range props for Finnish Brutality back in February, but with the match postponed because of covid restrictions that didn&#8217;t come to pass. However, Jari (CEO of Varusteleka) and I were not going to let that stop us&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/08\/tank-driving-in-finland-piglet-and-the-t55\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Tank Driving in Finland: Piglet and the T55<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":18487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[89,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-content","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18585,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18486\/revisions\/18585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surplused.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}