Kamov Ka-239 "Haggard"

[John Howling Mouse]

some designer decided to attach a couple of rotors to and used some left-over shopping cart wheels they had laying about.

Now that I've finished picking the chicken noodles out of the keys.........



That's one way to keep Bubbles in buisness, eh ?

Hey, shouldn't you be at WORK or something?

B)  

[Captain Canada]

I'm at home healing....see the arm post !

:dum:  

[The Rat]

Even the aircrew and ground-crew will be ugly.

Start submitting pictures of yourselves chaps, he can sculpt us for that!  ^_^

Looks like one really fun project Barry, and one that I think Lance will be watching with great interest.  

Me watching??? Why??

Let's just say that your thoughts regarding helicopters are abundantly clear.  

Or did someone hijack your profile and alter your signature?  ^_^  

[Gary]

Hey Baz,
How about one of those rotors that on one side of the hub you have a honken great blade, on the other side of the hub you have a streamlined counterweight. I dont rightly remember why that was tried but it did work. And man, that might be the ugliest rotor design ever.

BTW, if you did Kamov style counter rotating blades or twin shafts and blades, you don't need the tail boom.

[cthulhu77]

BTW, if you did Kamov style counter rotating blades or twin shafts and blades, you don't need the tail boom.

OOOF !!!  that would enter the realm of "fugly" at that point...yeeeccch.

[Tophe]

Dear Barry, could you tell us (or invent ) the story about the name Kamov Ka-239?
From outside, it seems a complete puzzle:
- Yes Russian Kamov and US Kaman are both Kam-, and have produced twin-boom twin-rotor helicopters (Ka-26 Hoodlum, H-43 Huskie), is that the reason to build a Kaman craft as Kamov, or do you mean - in the Cold War spoirit of our childhood - "as it is ugly, it cannot be Western, it must be communist shame"...
- For the Soviet that coded the Ka-22/26/32 etc. and the derivatives of the 26: Ka-126, Ka-226, unodd numbers are for fighters (MiG-15/17/19/21/23/25/29/31...) while helicopters have unodd numbers (Mi-6/8/10...). Why a 239 helicopter code? Helicopter-fighter with AA missiles somewhere? To fight airplanes or other helicopters?
- I have looked for the Westland Wasp that you mentionned as a reference, to see if the 239 code came from there, and found only that the Westland Wasp came from the Saunders-Roe P.531, that came from the Cierva Skeeter. Puzzle remaining...
- In the Kaman Huskie family, the Navy codes were very different from H-43 but were like HTK-1/K-225 and HUK-1/K-600. Was there a K-239 in between? (I mean: in your mind  I don't like the JMNs' universe)...
Well, this is half-serious: I need to explain in my twin-boom database...

[Hatchet]

Tophe, for helicopters there is the Ka-25, -27 and -29, Mi-17 and -25 (granted, they're developments of the Mi-8 and -24). Odd numbers are reasonably normal on Sov helos.

 

[lancer]

Even the aircrew and ground-crew will be ugly.

Start submitting pictures of yourselves chaps, he can sculpt us for that!  ^_^

Looks like one really fun project Barry, and one that I think Lance will be watching with great interest.  

Me watching??? Why??

Let's just say that your thoughts regarding helicopters are abundantly clear.  

Or did someone hijack your profile and alter your signature?  ^_^

Oh I see...... Aw they ain't that bad, but I am interested to see the outcome of this one.
Talking os Wasp's some god squad organisation had an ex RN one outside our local shopping centre the other week. The thing was so small I couldn't fit inside the cockpit!!!!      

[Julhelm]

If you really want ugliness you should take a look at Uncle Scrooge's helicopters from the classic 1950's/60's Donald Duck comics.

[Tophe]

Tophe, for helicopters there is the Ka-25, -27 and -29, Mi-17 and -25 (granted, they're developments of the Mi-8 and -24). Odd numbers are reasonably normal on Sov helos.

I have checked and you are very right:
odd Soviet helicopters Ka-15/25/27/29, Mi-1/9/17/25/35
so about 1/4 of the total,
with the unodd: Ka-8/10/18/20/22/26/28/32/50/52/60/118/126/226, Mi-2/4/6/8/10/12/14/22/24/26/28/30/32/34, Yak-24
Anyway, why 239? Somehow after Blohm-und-Voss Bv-238?
 

[Jschmus]

Tophe, if you've got to have a "logical" explanation, then...

In "real life", the first Kamov twin boom helicopter was the Ka-26, which first flew in the 1950s.  Development of this helicopter lead to the successful Ka-126.  Further work created the Ka-226.  By the same token, Barry's Kamov engineers could have built a Ka-39, then Ka-139 and finally Ka-239.

It sounds good to me...

[Tophe]

Barry's Kamov engineers could have built a Ka-39, then Ka-139 and finally Ka-239. It sounds good to me...

It sounds good to me too. But the final answer is in the brains of chief-engineer Barry... Will he tell us?

[elmayerle]

That single boom reminds me a lot of the mockup of the civilian version of the H-43 that showed up in AvWeek decades ago.  It also had a much more streamlined windscreen and front cabin.

[John Howling Mouse]

This baby will end up with twin booms, though a bit meatier than the original (stealing both from the Testor OV-10A Bronco kit in 1:48).

And, Tophe, the "Ka-239" was chosen because:

a. when I did a lot more creative designs and such, I had a great big bin with "FILE 239" on it for all the bits and pieces of ideas which had no definite home to go in.  This phrase became known to some of my co-creators as that black-hole to which interesting but not Earth-shattering ideas go and it reminded me of this ugly little helo;

b. I instinctively feel that odd numbers are less attractive than even ones (how's that for a mathematical complex?  Weird thing is: so does my wife-----are we the only ones who've ever chosen a preference over number types?).  Since this is the World's Ugliest Helicopter, it needed an odd-number model type;

c. Ka-239 wasn't used yet (that I knew of).

B)  

[anthonyp]

Instead of "Haggard," NATO Intel had a few other suggestions for such a unique Helo:

1)  Ka-239 "Handsome" (some Intel guy is sick in the head, and apparently blind)
2)  Ka-239 "Hideous" (another intel guy is too blunt for his own good)
3)  Ka-239 "Hat Rack" (yet another intel guy who had a bizarre sense of logic and got ahold of a Thesaurus when someone questioned whether "Haggard" completely fit.  "Haggard" won over this one after the intel guy was chased into a locker by the rest of the intel crew who was tired of his endless use of that damned thesaurus!  What?  You try listening day after day to a maniac with a sense of humor that made sense only to him!  He's lucky we only chased him into that locker and kept him there for a week...)
4)  Ka-239 "Hooooo, boy" (as in "Hoooo, boy, that's one ugly chopper!"  The intel guy was from the Southern US and didn't quite grasp the way things were code-named by NATO)
5)  Ka-239 "Holy...!" (first reaction of the every intel guy who saw it.  The second part of the two word phrase rhymed with "spit," but no one wanted to print that in NATO recognition manuals.)