Register review

Twenty-six aircraft are listed in the New Allocations section this month including the first Kaman K-Max helicopter to be seen in Australia. Kaman Helicopters, best known in this country for the RAN Seasprite debacle, was founded in 1945 by American Charles Kaman who was researching a better way of overcoming the inherent instability of early helicopters. His first designs used the twin, contra-rotating rotor system mounted on a single pylon, which negated the need for a tail rotor and produced a very stable platform. Charles Hiller also experimented with this system, but dropped it in favour of a conventional single main rotor and tail rotor system for the UH-12 series of helicopters.

Russian helicopter manufacturer Kamov also adopted and developed the contra rotating, twin rotor system with several Kamov KA-32s using this system seen in Australia and PNG in the past.