24-Year-Old Nigerian Builds Helicopter From Junk

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….Continue reading

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.

Good job my dear…am happy your channeling your creativity towards something good!