Home-made Helicopters in Nigeria

W33dz writes "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 on yahoo or on Gizmodo using the money he makes from repairing cell phones and computers. While some of the parts have been sourced from a crashed 747, the chopper contains all sorts of surprises."

Comments

Would be interesting to see how it "flies"

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

From the picture I am not able to make out how he did the most crucial thing for the helicopter, controlling of the collective pitch (sometimes called total pitch) and the cyclic pitch. Without it, the craft will lift off and "fly" uncontrollably and land. I see two large struts holding up the rotor hub and the hub seems to be a ball. He might have done away with total pitch, relying on throttle ( input power) to self adjust the "lift" and the ball being pivoted to provide just the cyclic pitch control. That will give some rudimentary direction control. Interesting toy. Hope a youtube video appears soon.

Sure I am glad there is atleast one Nigerian working with his hands and brain instead of sening emails about 18 million dollars in a slush fund left over from the coffers of General Abacha.