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 and computers. While some of the parts have
been sourced from a crashed 747, the chopper contains all sorts of
surprises.
The 12-meter-long
aircraft, which has never flown above a height of seven feet, is powered
by a secondhand 133 horsepower engine from a Honda Civic. In the basic
cockpit there are two Toyota car seats, with a couple more in the cabin
behind. Controls are simple, with an ignition button, an accelerator
lever to control vertical thrust and a joystick that provides balance
and bearing. A camera beneath the chopper connected to a small screen on
the dash gives the pilot ground vision, and he communicates via a small
transmitter.
Mubarak says he
learned the basics 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, allow it 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 goes and 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.http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WelcomeToKemmyOkpakasBlog/~3/yipewZ_nPng/naijas-got-talent24-year-old-nigerian.html
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