Nigerian's DIY helicopter
A northern Nigerian college student built his own helicopter from an old Toyota car engine and scavenged parts from a Boeing 747 that crashed near his town of Kano. Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi, 24, has already briefly flown it four times and is now constructing a new model based on a motorcycle engine. He says it will fly for several hours at the low attitude of 15 feet. Abdullahi says he was inspired to build his choppers from watching action movies and learned to fly by reading about it online. From AFP:
Link (Thanks, Sean Ness!)The (current model's) cockpit consists of a push-button ignition, an accelerator lever between the seats which controls vertical thrust, a joystick that provides balance and bearing.
A small screen on the dashboard connects to a camera underneath the helicopter for ground vision, a set of six buttons adjusts the screen's brightness while a small transmitter is used for communication.
"You start it, allow it to run for a minute or two and you then shift the accelerator forward and the propeller on top begins to spin. The further you shift the accelerator the faster it goes and once you reach 300 rmp you press the joystick and it takes off," Abdullahi explained from the cockpit.
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"a set of six buttons adjusts the screen's brightness"
!!!!
either something got lost in translation, or this guy's priorities might be a bit screwy.
You first.
in Soviet Russia the chopper flies you!
Nice!
when you're flying this thing you may not have time to continuously look at the video brightness while you adjust it with an up/down rocker switch.
his way has a button for max bright, min bright and four settings between, accessible in a fraction of a second, perhaps without even looking.
How nice and inspiring.
"He says it will fly for several hours at the low attitude of 15 feet."
I wonder if this means that it simply can't fly above ground-effect height.
@ Bricology:
Exactly, 133hp for something that large is just not enough power for it to actually fly.
Looking at the rotor bearing, I don't see any kind of swashplate, it looks to maybe be hinged to pivot fore and aft only. No flapping hinge either, so as it gains speed it will start to bank towards the retreating blade.
Impressive for something built out of scrap and spare parts for sure, but I don't think I'd want to ride in it. :)
I'm not convinced this isn't a hoax. Helicopters are just too difficult to learn how to fly by reading.
Here's a video of a first-time pilot:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mo82pnyMR44
AutoMatt, if the helicopter can't get beyond ground effect, the whole thing may be a self-limiting system. He may not have enough power or control surface deflection to really get himself into trouble like the first time pilot in your video. Most trainer aircraft are slow, stable, and relatively low-powered. His home-built chopper is very low powered, and likely doesn't have the degree of control travel that the "real" chopper has, which may prevent him from entering into the pilot-induced oscillations that brought the other bird down.