Kaman Aerospace plans to restart production of its K-Max external-lift helicopter by the end of the year, based on demand for a new firefighting variant starting certification flights this month.
Kaman flew the FireMax for the first time on 11 July and aims to certificate the aircraft “within months”. The FireMax is fitted with a fixed 2,650 litre (690USgal) carbonfibre tank and a hydraulic hover refill system. Roger Wassmuth, director of K-Max marketing and business development at Kaman, says the company has received “significant interest” from non-US firefighting agencies interested in the hot-and-high performance of the helitanker and says Kaman aims to use the demand to restart production of the K-Max by year-end. “It’s hard to commit to a figure, but to restart production we’d need five to 10 orders, which would be from at least two countries,” he says. Wassmuth adds that renewed interest in the standard K-Max from logging and construction sectors could also be satisfied if FireMax orders permitted the line to be reopened.
Kaman plans to do around 80% of the work at its Bloomfield, Connecticut plant, which has concentrated on spare-parts production and overhaul since K-Max production ended (Flight International, 17-24 August 2004), with subassemblies produced at Jacksonville, Florida.
JUSTIN WASTNAGE/LONDON
Source: Flight International