A 24-year-old undergraduate from Nigeria is building helicopters out of old car and bike parts. Mubarak Muhammed Abdullahi, a physics student, spent eight months building the yellow model seen here, using the money he makes from repairing cellphones andcomputers.
While some of the parts havebeen sourced from a crashed747, the chopper contains all sorts of surprises.
The 12-meter-long aircraft, which has never flown abovea height of seven feet, is powered by a second hand 133 horsepower engine from a Honda Civic. In the basic cockpit there are two Toyota car seats, with a couple morein the cabin behind.
Controls are simple, with an ignition button, an accelerator lever to control vertical thrust and a joystickthat provides balance and bearing.
A camera beneath the chopper connected to a small screen on the dash gives thepilot ground vision, and he communicates via a small transmitter.
Mubarak says he learned thebasics of helicopter flying through the internet after he decided it would be easier to build a chopper than a car. Flying his creation is easy, he claims. “You start it, allowit to run for a minute or two and you then shift the accelerator forward and the propeller on top begins to spin,” he explains. “The further you shift the accelerator the faster it goesand once you reach 300 rpm you press the joystick and it takes off.”
Undeterred that his home-made transporter, which lives in a hangar on campus, lacks the gear to measure atmospheric pressure, altitude and humidity, Mubarak is working on a new machine which “will be a radical improvement on the first one in terms of sophistication and aesthetics.”
A two-seater with the ability to fly at 15 feet for three hours at a time, Mubarak’s new creation will be powered by a brand-new motor straight from Taiwan, normally found in motorbikes.
Good job...am happy your channeling your creativity towards something good!
Hit LIKE for this guy and dropa Comment, its time we all start working on our dreams no matter how impossible they look..