Nigerian Physics Student Built a DIY Helicopter Out of Junk!

Posted by Alex in Car & Vehicle on October 24, 2007 at 1:29 am


A 24-year-old undergraduate physics student in Nigeria is building a helicopter 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. 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.

Link – Thanks mikolka!


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COMMENT

8 comments to "Nigerian Physics Student Built a DIY Helicopter Out of Junk!"

  1. Anita
    October 24th, 2007 at 9:19 am

    Wow, veyr cool. I can see why he's part of the Physics Stud Net ... ;)

  2. Dean
    October 24th, 2007 at 9:36 am

    I call this BS. The way he's describing what he does to fly isn't correct with typical helicopters.

    Plus, the materials he used (car seats, etc...) are quite heavy and with only 133 hp I seriously doubt this would get off the ground.

    As an example, a Robinson R44 helicopter (also a four seater) uses a 245 hp engine. Also, if you look closely at the gimbal (the area where the rotors are attached to essentially the vertical shaft) there's a lot of stuff missing such as the parts that change the pitch of the rotors.

    Plus, I don't know what he would have used from the old car and crashed 747 to build those specific parts.

    Creating something from junk parts is all well and good (I go to Burning Man every year) and sure, he can even call it a helicopter. But the reality is that this thing doesn't fly like a helicopter. Show me a picture or even better, a video of this thing actually flying and I'll gladly eat crow.

  3. matt
    October 24th, 2007 at 10:56 am

    He should use it to fly out of Nigeria.

  4. Vonskippy
    October 24th, 2007 at 11:50 am

    Shhhhhhh.....Listen.....you can hear a "golf clap" from the 1930's.

  5. john
    October 24th, 2007 at 12:36 pm

    I think they should send Dr. Watson (i think that was his name) to check this story out.

  6. Alex
    October 24th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

    Anita FTW! I've fixed the glaringly large typo (also thanks to Andrew Stewart who pointed it out to me via email).

  7. Chris
    October 24th, 2007 at 6:41 pm

    video seems to be down

  8. Alex
    October 25th, 2007 at 3:18 pm

    There is no video clip on this particular post, Chris.


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