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| Science & Technology |
| Nigerian student builds home-brew helicopter |
| 2007-10-23 |
| Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi, a 24-year-old physics undergraduate in northern Nigeria, takes old cars and motorbikes to pieces in the back yard at home and builds his own helicopters from the parts. "It took me eight months to build this one," he said, sweat pouring from his forehead as he filled the radiator of the banana yellow four-seater which he now parks in the grounds of his university. The chopper, which has flown briefly on six occasions, is made from scrap aluminium that Abdullahi bought with the money he makes from computer and mobile phone repairs, and a donation from his father, who teaches at Kano's Bayero university. It is powered by a second-hand 133 horsepower Honda Civic car engine and kitted out with seats from an old Toyota saloon car. Its other parts come from the carcass of a Boeing 747 which crashed near Kano some years ago. For a four-seater it is a big aircraft, measuring twelve metres (39 feet) long, seven metres high by five wide. It has never attained an altitude of more than seven feet. The cockpit consists of a push-button ignition, an accelerator lever between the seats which controls vertical thrust, a joystick that provides balance and bearing. He said he learned the rudiments of flying a helicopter from the Internet and first got the idea of building one from the films he watches on television. Smart kid. Just imagine what he could do with a little training. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #3 So, is the helicopter main rotor equipped with a Jesus or an Allan Nut? Inquiring minds want to know. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2007-10-23 18:23 |
| #2 This being an amateur home-built bird, I'm not sure conventional helicopter terms (like collective) necessarily apply. He hasn't flown far yet - and control problems may be why. (They were for the earliest helicopters, and also the earliest conventional airplanes - controlability was the Wright brothers critical contribution!) |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2007-10-23 07:34 |
| #1 The cockpit consists of a push-button ignition, an accelerator lever between the seats which controls vertical thrust, a joystick that provides balance and bearing. Dumb reporter. Imagine what he could write if he knew a little bit about helicopters and sentences. |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2007-10-23 07:13 |