FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
February 1, 2006
For more information contact:

Gene Watson, WSSI Project Manager,
WSSI program
Cell: 307.760.0456

Kennon Aircraft Covers
Ronald J. Kensey
Sheridan, Wyoming
Phone: 307-674-6498

Sheridan firm wins grant to develop insulation for Navy aircraft

CHEYENNE – The first step in a Sheridan firm’s plan to aid the Navy in aircraft design took off this week when the Wyoming Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer Initiative (WSSI) awarded a $5,000 research grant to Kennon Aircraft Covers under the Phase 0 program.

Ron Kensey, President and CEO of Kennon Aircraft Covers, says this particular grant will help develop a new insulation system for the V-22 Osprey, a tilt-rotor naval plane that takes off and lands vertically and flies horizontally. According to Kensey, unlike commercial aircrafts, which are paneled and insulated to regulate noise and temperature, the insulating blankets currently being used in the V-22s are akin to old piano blankets hooked to studs on the aircraft. The studs are glued on to the plane, which can cause the blanket to fall off if the gluing is not precise.

Kennon’s company hopes to use a unibody design that may add some ballistic properties to the aircraft. This could help shield the aircraft from bullets. At present Kennon equips Chinook, Blackhawk and Apache helicopters with insulation blankets and sunshields for cockpits.

“We’re very well suited to do all this, because we do a tremendous amount of work with the army and the navy,” said Kensey.

The request for proposal for this project was found on the Internet by Sheridan resident and former SBIR award-winner Mark White. He then forwarded it on to Kensey, which resulted in the company’s first Phase 0 grant.

“It (government grants) isn’t something we look at every day,” Kensey said. “Usually they are way over my head and require a lot of pretty high-level research. With this grant, it is a practical need that we have that happened to fit us.”

The Phase 0 award allowed Kensey to fly to Pax River Naval Air Station in Maryland to talk with this author of the grant request.

“If it wasn’t for the Phase 0 program, we could not have done this. We had to see it through his eyes (the author of the grant request) and know what he wanted. It allowed us to do a lot of instant research on the ground,” he added.

The SBIR Phase 0 Program helps Wyoming companies develop competitive proposals for the federal SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. The SBIR Phase 0 program is a project of the Wyoming SBIR/STTR Initiative (WSSI). The WSSI initiative is funded by the Wyoming Business Council and gives out $120,000 in Phase 0 grants each year.

The federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs make up the WSSI alliance and provide more than $2 billion annually in Research and Development (R&D) grants and contracts to qualified small businesses.

Eleven federal agencies are required by law to provide these funds by setting aside 2.5 percent of their annual extra-mural R&D budgets for use exclusively by U.S. small businesses for new product R&D. Hence, these programs provide a unique source of start-up and seed capital for small businesses to develop new innovative product concepts.

The mission of the Wyoming Business Council is to facilitate the economic growth of Wyoming. For more information, please visit the Web site at www.wyomingbusiness.org.

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