Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

cavelamb himself wrote:
An accomplishment? Or an accident looking for a crash site?



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.

I make it an accomplishment, AND probably also an accident waiting to
happen;hopefully not.
Just figuring out the hard numbers and applying them to available
parts and achieving untethered flight for even a few feet, considering
everything involved in doing that, marks this fellow as someone with
unusual talent.
Fron the looks of that thing however, I sincerely hope some legitimate
helo company offers this guy a steady job before his talent ends up
being wasted by his experimenting any deeper into the highly
complicated world of helo flying.
After accomplishing what he has done already, I'd not like to see him
injured or killed for lack of suitable employment.

Plenty of crap for him to jury rig in Nigeria.
They still make ( or at least did a few years ago) the VW Beetle and the
old Peugot 504, whihc have to be the two hardiest cars ever made judgine
by thr amount of abuse the Nigerians give them.I can see a few Peugot
parts in that heli, I think.
The Air Force also make the RV6A as a trainer, dubbing it the "Air
Beetle" after the VW. they use them as Air force trainers.
So, there are things for the enterprising engineer to do there!


Bertie