Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Chinese Home Built Helicopter





Chen Zhao Rong is the builder of this crazy little homemade helicopter and has somewhat of an amazing little tale. His education seemingly failed him before he made it to middle school and never learned to read English, limiting him to some really horrible Engrish. But Chen's always been more interested in mechanical engineering, though without the formal education and training, than English. But More.. he's had to figure both out on his own. Now there are plenty of people out there that fit within the same realm as Chen, but they typically don't set out to build a helicopter as their first project.


Chen decided the only way he'd be able to realize his dream was by using the vast resource of the often time-blocked or heavily-censored Chinese internet, attempting to locate foreign-language flight and engineering websites. It was on these sites where he spent countless hours poring over schematics and carefully studying diagrams in order to start building his own personal helicopter. When he was confident enough in his abilities, Chen started out by building and welding all of the parts himself, all the while, cross checking his internet-sourced research images.


Once he had completed all necessary components for the space frame, he located, purchased and mounted an older used motor. He had finally completed the build of his very own, homemade helicopter after roughly two years of development and a little less than RMB 70,000 ($10,294 USD), but there was one final challenge that faced Chen — He needed to learn how to fly it ... without killing himself.

Eventually, after many false starts, Chen got himself off the ground like the little Chinese Wright Brother he is and as you can see in the video below, he looks to be fairly confident in his homemade craft's abilities.

Chen's luck would not last long. In May 2008, while he was taking to the skies on his way to a neighboring village his motor sputtered to a stop at nearly 70 km/h, sending him hurtling back to Earth and eventually landing in a field. Chen managed to survive the crash and even walked his self-defeated ass all the way back home. He probably wished he would have died because when he finally arrived back home, his wife was irate and left him for a week and then threatened to leave him for good if he didn't stop flying. Not only was Chen's wife unhappy, but news of his crash traveled the airwaves and eventually caught the attention of local police who made him sign a document stating that he would never fly again.

Soucre:liveleak.com

9 comments:

JSC said...

estoy buscando planos para construir un cri cri, por favor si pudiera contactarse conmigo. atte juan simon cappi

Unknown said...

Hi Chen, could you kindly provide me with more details with regards to the engine power and materials used, wing blade span

Unknown said...

喂陈,可能您亲切地提供我关于更多细节关于用于的引擎力量和材料,翼刀片间距

Anonymous said...

That' an awesome helicopter! Amazing to think that it was only built by an ordinary Chinese farmer. Impressive!

Web Designer said...

Doing it THIS way just makes folks who do this look like kooks because of, well...the stuff you see in the video and the admission of a "near-catastrophic" incident earlier that got them grounded by the locals.
Building stuff is cool, and it's okay to kill yourself in the endeavor.

Thanks
Website Designing Company

Anonymous said...

Nice take off.

anyon said...

Pretty neat,


there are plans available to build homemade helicopters from this website:
http://www.tinkersource.com/rotorcraft-plans-cd.html

mohan said...

he is not an aerospace or aviation expert isn't it but he proved that if you have ambition or dedication in learning of things you will get the output what the input of knowledge we feed so don't criticize him its easy. you didn't know the value of interest, at least he did something, but what about us?

ThingsStuffJunk&Crap said...

Everyone's a critic! I'm not even sure how valid this story even is. It could have been totally contrived by totally non-chinese people which whom have never been to china or it could be totally what it says. Either way, it's a very interesting story nonetheless and all considering, I dig it & I truly believe that all those underdogs WITHOUT SOME CHIP OF IGNORANCE on their shoulder will agree in the "fact" that this guy overcame any obstacles and hurdles and successfully accomplished a true feet of greatness, intellect and dogged determination. Isn't that really the underlying message in this story? Stop hating, keep hating, either way, you people don't really have as much impact on those who are determined to accomplish something and BE SOMEONE!!!!!

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