Everyone has a story behind their Avatar. I thought I'd share mine.
I came accross this article about 7 years ago. I was a technician at a Honda dealership at the time. You gotta love this guys resourcefulness. Hope you enjoy it.....
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. 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.
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. &
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