and a new pilot/engineer is born.

Ricky wrote:
On Jan 14, 7:19 pm, William Hung wrote:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/homemade-...-man-builds-wo...

Way to go Muhammed!

Wil

I remain extremely skeptical that the thing flys until I see a picture
or video of it in the air.
I mean, 133 hp?? With heavy Toyota car seats (4 of them)? Don't the
smallest helios have over 200 hp?

Ricky

Other articles on the helicopter have reported its maximum altitude as
seven feet. He is hoping to build one that will achieve fifteen feet.
Still an achievement, as that is untethered.

Charles

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.

On Jan 14, 11:22 pm, cavelamb himself wrote:
An accomplishment? Or an accident looking for a crash site?
.........

Hmmmm.... it did not crash yet. But plenty of homebuilts here in North
America have while testing. Plenty of homebuilts here never got off
the ground because they are still in the garage after 20, 30? years
and never get built. Come on... give the youth credit for ambition.

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:37:27 -0800 (PST), wrote in
:

Plenty of homebuilts here never got off
the ground because they are still in the garage after 20, 30? years
and never get built. Come on... give the youth credit for ambition.

Exactly. Not only that, but:


http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/homemade-...unk-313408.php
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.

Eight months! Who has built anything that flies in 8 months?

MMmmm..I guess I have:
http://www.dighera.com/otto_meet_5-23-71_larry.avi :-)
http://www.dighera.com/otto_meet_5-23-71.avi
(These take a little time to load; be patient.)
It still took about a month of weekends to complete.

Historical information he
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...a?dmode=source

On Jan 15, 3:21 am, Larry Dighera wrote:
Eight months! Who has built anything that flies in 8 months?
....

The late Tim Crawford built a complex homebuilt that flew for a long
time (a long EZ) in nine months. Its not the months or years, it's the
hours. Took me about 2300 hours to build mine http://www.abri.com/sq2000
Some people do 2 hours per week and some 40.

But the Nigerian unit is hardly complex - got only a few feet of the
ground. So I say to all those guys putting him down, he still deserves
credit for ambition - not that I would want to fly in the thing.

And I don't agree with the hinted implication. Just because the kid is
from Nigeria does not mean he is guaranteed to be dishonest..... Just
because somebody is from North America does not guarantee they are
honest.

wrote:
On Jan 15, 3:21 am, Larry Dighera wrote:
Eight months! Who has built anything that flies in 8 months?
....

The late Tim Crawford built a complex homebuilt that flew for a long
time (a long EZ) in nine months. Its not the months or years, it's the
hours. Took me about 2300 hours to build mine http://www.abri.com/sq2000
Some people do 2 hours per week and some 40.


North American Aviation took the P-51 from doodles on a napkin to lifting off
the tarmac in 117 days.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com

But the Nigerian unit is hardly complex - got only a few feet of the
ground.

Really?

Do you *know* this?

No one on this list has seen the aircraft flying, nor a video of it
flying, nor a picture of it flying.

If a link to a legitimate new source can be found (not to a blog),
then it will at least be some evidence. As it stands now, there is no
evidence this is anything but a hoax.

On Jan 15, 12:43*pm, wrote:
But the Nigerian unit is hardly complex - got only a few feet of the
ground.

Really?

Do you *know* this?

No one on this list has seen the aircraft flying, nor a video of it
flying, nor a picture of it flying.

If a link to a legitimate new source can be found (not to a blog),
then it will at least be some evidence. As it stands now, there is no
evidence this is anything but a hoax.

"new" should be "news"

Also I got nothing against Nigerians, if one of the above was hinting
that I was hinting that Nigerians are scam artists.

My DE was Nigerian. An excellent pilot from my perspective. I don't
think he was scamming me, nor was he a hoax.

On Jan 15, 12:43 pm, wrote:
But the Nigerian unit is hardly complex - got only a few feet of the
ground.

Really?

Do you *know* this?

No one on this list has seen the aircraft flying, nor a video of it
flying, nor a picture of it flying.

If a link to a legitimate new source can be found (not to a blog),
then it will at least be some evidence.

OK. Maybe you are right. Some of us will have to arrange a trip to
Nigeria to verify it. You go ahead, I can't afford it.

As it stands now, there is no evidence this is anything but a hoax.

So where is this evidence that it is a hoax?

Lets see this logic. If a report is from the western world it is
assumed true (innocent until proven guilty). If a report is from
Nigeria (and some other places) than it is assumed to be a hoax
(guilty, of anything we want to assume, until proven innocent).

I am not leaving out the possibility that it is inaccurate or a hoax
or whatever. But we got to give all a fair chance without jumping to
conclusions - even though notorious scams come from Nigeria.

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.

--
Dudley Henriques