Story ID: 
Russian Rotorcraft Resurrected
By: Bill Wagstaff
Caption: In the peek-a-boo world of Russian rotorcrafting (now you see the program, now you don’t), plans have been announced to finally go ahead with the Kamov Ka-
Word Count: 201
In the peek-a-boo world of Russian rotorcrafting (now you see the program, now you don’t), plans have been announced to finally go ahead with the Kamov Ka-62, a civil adaptation of the Ka-60 “Kasatka” military helo. An earlier attempt to market a civil variant of this 14,330-lb-mtow rotorcraft was abandoned some years ago. Now the president of the Russian Federation’s Far Eastern Federal Okrug (roughly analogous to a U.S. territory before achieving statehood) wants to develop a new Ka-62 variant designed to withstand the severe climatic conditions of the far eastern Russian provinces (more familiarly albeit less precisely known as Siberia). He wants to assist in “the beginning of a large program for improvement of the transport sector of Russia’s Far East economy,” in the words of Konstantin Pulikovskiy, the Russian Federation president’s authorized representative to the Far Eastern Federal Okrug. No firm timetable for a Ka-62 civil variant has yet been announced, with officials admitting they are still arranging the financial details of the deal. The Ka-60 is a conventionally configured main- and tail-rotored helo (except that the anti-torque system in the tail is of the ducted-fan fenestron type). Similar to Eurocopter’s Dauphin line.