and a new pilot/engineer is born.

john smith wrote:
Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:
Jim Stewart wrote:
Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
William Hung wrote in

:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/homemade-...n-man-builds-w
ork ing-helicopters-from-junk-313408.php
Way to go Muhammed!

Wil


Holy crap. If it even leaves the ground he must be a genius.
So you've told us what you think of ultralights. What
do you think of homebuilt helicopters?
I flew a Breezy once and I can tell you it felt REAL strange sitting
up there in a dining room chair with the wind blowing up my butt. It
was kind of an "unusual" sensation to say the least.



I got a ride in one. Sorry, on one. The owner made me sit in the
front. And then he did a big steeply turning dive!

Dudley, Bertie... it's more fun sitting in the front seat during a stall
and recovery! The sky just drops away and you have the whole world in
front of you.

I did a few stalls before I landed the Breezy. I always do that with a
strange airplane just to get the feel of it near the left side of the
envelope. You're right, it WAS a STRANGE feeling :-))))

--
Dudley Henriques

wrote in message
...
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.

Not worth my time. The burden of proof for a claim like this is on the
person making the claim, not the person reading about the claim. How
hard can it be for Muhammed to have a friend take a picture of the
contraption in flight? Not as hard as making it fly, I presume.

So where is this evidence that it is a hoax?

Lack of credulity on my part:

1) Failure to show the aircraft in flight.
2) No valid source exists for the news as reported by the blogs. The
"Yahoo" link is bogus. The "raw feed" link is merely another blog.
3) The craft looks like it can't fly for various reasons.
4) It was built from junk in 8 months of spare time. He found all
these parts in a junk yard and made them work together for controlled
helicopter flight in eight months -- but only in his SPARE TIME. Hmm.
Must have a lot of that spare time and some damned fine junk yards at
his disposal.
5) No machining required. Apparently he didn't have to machine
ANYTHING for a completely custom, one-off vehicle. Or does he have
lathes and other machine tooling stuff at his ready disposal? Welders,
sheet metal manipulating equipment, digital equipment and interfaces
to make the "joystick" work as a controller. That stuff takes time.
More time than 8 months of spare time.

And you know, he's never done anything like this before!

This would be an amazing, and very unlikely, job to pull off ANYWHERE
in the world.

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).

It has nothing to do with location in my opinion. If that contraption
were in my neighbor's backyard here in "the western world" and he
said, "hey, it flies. It flies up to 7 feet in the air," I'd say
"great, let's see it."

It has to do with lack of evidence that flight was ever performed in
the unique device pictured in a single picture only SITTING FIRMLY ON
THE GROUND.

The burden is not on me to prove that it can fly or that it can't.
It's at least possible I think, so, let's see it. Is it too much to
ask to see more pictures before you believe a story like this?



More food for thought.

Am I the only one that can't see a tail rotor on the tail boom?

Also, the main rotor shaft appears to be about 1" in diameter, with little
if any outboard bearing near the hub, perhaps even a universal joint. Could
this really be successful at harnessing 133 hp, at 400 rpm or so?

I have serious doubts as well. Here is a couple more photos but still not
much help.

http://www.afrigadget.com/2007/10/22...ains-by-storm/

Maxwell wrote:



More food for thought.

Am I the only one that can't see a tail rotor on the tail boom?

There is a tail rotor back there I just can't see what could be driving it.

On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:23:40 -0600, "Maxwell"
wrote in :

Am I the only one that can't see a tail rotor on the tail boom?

I see what appears to be a two-blade tail rotor in approximately a
vertical orientation with top blade black and the bottom one silver.
Try saving the photograph on your computer and enlarging by spinning
the wheel on your mouse in MS Photo and Fax viewer, or enhance it with
Photoshop.

john smith wrote in news:478d1998$0$6483
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Jim Stewart wrote:
Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
William Hung wrote in
news:e185f715-1cb4-4493-ad2a-

:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/homemade-.../nigerian-man-
builds-w
ork ing-helicopters-from-junk-313408.php
Way to go Muhammed!

Wil


Holy crap. If it even leaves the ground he must be a genius.
So you've told us what you think of ultralights. What
do you think of homebuilt helicopters?
I flew a Breezy once and I can tell you it felt REAL strange sitting
up there in a dining room chair with the wind blowing up my butt. It
was kind of an "unusual" sensation to say the least.



I got a ride in one. Sorry, on one. The owner made me sit in the
front.
And then he did a big steeply turning dive!

Dudley, Bertie... it's more fun sitting in the front seat during a
stall
and recovery! The sky just drops away and you have the whole world in
front of you.


Oh ****, I got that "feeling" in the pit of my stomach just thinking
about it.


Bertie

Here are a few more pictures of the guy.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...7tMmr2zeQmiRig

And here is a statement from the same link page:

Although some government officials got very excited when they saw him
conduct a demonstration flight in neighbouring Katsina state,
Nigeria's Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has so far shown no interest
in his aircraft.

On Jan 15, 8:09 pm, wrote:
Here are a few more pictures of the guy.http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...7tMmr2zeQmiRig

From the photos its amazing simplicity - he's got a front-wheel car
driveshaft running the rotor and implementing rotor tilt. Hey if he
only gets it off the ground thats flying. Don't forget helicopter
ground effect, valid for height of one rotor length. Thats probably
where he could get the 7? feet. Less power needed to hover near ground.

wrote:
On Jan 15, 8:09 pm, wrote:
Here are a few more pictures of the guy.http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5...7tMmr2zeQmiRig

From the photos its amazing simplicity - he's got a front-wheel car
driveshaft running the rotor and implementing rotor tilt. Hey if he
only gets it off the ground thats flying. Don't forget helicopter
ground effect, valid for height of one rotor length. Thats probably
where he could get the 7? feet. Less power needed to hover near ground.

He could still have a tether at up to 10 feet negating the need for a
tail rotor until it's ready for solo flight.

Tony

On Jan 15, 9:14*am, Bob Moore wrote:
Mortimer Schnerd, RN wrote

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

Mortimer...Do you know what the "Tarmac" is?

From Wikipedia:

snip

While the specific Tarmac pavement is not common in some countries
today, many people use the word to refer to generic paved areas at
airports, especially the airport ramp or "apron", near the terminals
despite the fact that many of these areas are in fact made of concrete.
This term seems to have been popularized when it became part of the news
lexicon following live coverage of the Entebbe hijacking in 1976, where
"Tarmac" was frequently used by the on-scene BBC reporter in describing
the hijack scene. The Wick Airport at Wick in Caithness, Scotland is one
of the few airports that still has a real Tarmac runway.

It was in the lexicon long befor 76. I was taught it in the USAFSS
(intelligence service) back in 54 when I was studying Russian.

Harry K