[nagdu] Fidelco: Charles H. Kaman, Helicopter Innovator, Dies at 91

Ginger Kutsch gingerKutsch at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 3 13:11:29 UTC 2011


Charles H. Kaman, Helicopter Innovator, Dies at 91
By MOTOKO RICH
Published: February 2, 2011
NYTimes.com
 
Mr. Kaman, who had suffered several strokes over the last decade,
died of complications of pneumonia, his daughter, Cathleen Kaman,
said. He lived in Bloomfield. 
 
Mr. Kaman (pronounced ka-MAN) was a 26-year-old aeronautical
engineer when he founded the Kaman Aircraft Company in 1945 in
the garage of his mother's home in West Hartford, Conn. By the
time he retired as chairman in 2001, he had built the Kaman
Corporation into a billion-dollar concern that distributes
motors, pumps, bearings and other products as well as making
helicopters and their parts. 
 
Within the aerospace industry, Mr. Kaman is best known for
inventing dual intermeshing helicopter rotors, which move in
opposite directions, and for introducing the gas turbine jet
engine to helicopters. The company's HH-43 Huskie was a workhorse
in rescue missions in the Vietnam War. 
 
Mr. Kaman, a guitar enthusiast, also invented the Ovation guitar,
effectively reversing the vibration-reducing technology of
helicopters to create a generously vibrating instrument that
incorporated aerospace materials into its rounded back. In the
mid-1960s he created Ovation Instruments, a division of his
company, to manufacture it. 
 
The Ovation allows musicians to amplify their sound without
generating the feedback that often comes from using microphones.
It was popularized in the late 1960s by the pop and country star
Glen Campbell, who played it on his television show, "The Glen
Campbell Good Time Hour," and who appeared in advertisements for
the company. A long roster of rock and folk music guitarists
began using it as well. 
 
With his second wife, Roberta Hallock Kaman, Mr. Kaman founded
the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation, which trains German shepherds
as guide dogs for the blind and the police. Since 1981, Fidelco
has placed 1,300 guide dogs in 35 states and four Canadian
provinces, said Eliot D. Russman, the foundation's executive
director. 
 
"It came down to the helicopters, guitars and dogs," Mr. Kaman's
eldest son, C. William Kaman II, said in a telephone interview. 
 
In addition to his daughter, Cathleen, an artist who is known
professionally as Beanie Kaman, and his son William, Mr. Kaman is
survived by another son, Steven; four grandchildren; and two
great-grandchildren. 
 
Born on June 15, 1919, in Washington, Charles Huron Kaman was the
only child of Charles William Kaman and Mabel Davis Kaman. As a
teenager, he loved building model airplanes from balsa wood and
tissue paper and flying them in indoor competitions. He had once
hoped to be a professional pilot but abandoned that ambition
because he was deaf in his right ear. 
 
He received his bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering
from the Catholic University of America in 1940. After
graduating, he went to work at Hamilton Standard Propeller
Corporation, a unit of United Aircraft. He soon met Igor
Sikorsky, another pioneer in helicopter design, who ran United's
helicopter division and who inspired Mr. Kaman to begin
developing his own parts. 
 
One of his first inventions was the "servo-flap," which could be
added to the edges of a rotor blade to help stabilize a
helicopter. But one of his greatest contributions was to
introduce jet engines to helicopters. 
 
"It gave them more power," said Walter J. Boyne, chairman of the
National Aeronautic Association and the author of numerous books
on aviation. "Helicopters really moved into their own." 
 
Terry Fogarty, who worked closely with Mr. Kaman for nearly a
decade developing the K-MAX "aerial truck," said Mr. Kaman, who
developed the first remote-control helicopter in 1957, envisioned
an unmanned cargo helicopter that would take over the "dull,
dirty and dangerous missions." 
 
The company is developing such a helicopter, based on the K-MAX,
and has a contract to deploy it to the Marine Corps for use in
Afghanistan. 
 
Mr. Kaman married Helen Sylvander in 1945; they divorced in 1971.
Later that year he married Roberta Hallock, who died last year. 
 
Ms. Kaman recalled her father strumming different versions of the
Ovation in a studio at home, trying to figure out how deep or
shallow to make the rounded back to produce the best sound. 
 
"That was his big gift to the three of us," she said. "When he
would come home, he would play guitar." 
 



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