I've been working on it for 4 years - 22-yr-old varsity student sets out to build helicopter

A young man and an aspiring mechanical engineer, Nii Amartei Amarteifio, has revealed in a LinkedIn post that nearly four years ago in the university, he started researching rotary-wing aircraft.

That study led him into building one for himself. To achieve that, he would spend more time in his department’s workshop in school as he worked on perfecting his fabrication skills.

He said days after he built the prototype of what he wanted, it never came out well as there were areas that needed to be perfected.

One of the challenges he had was having a weighty piece of metal. To achieve what he really wanted, the man set out on more prototypes.

Three months ago, he went ahead to create a fifth one from the experiences he had gathered from the unsuccessful ones.

Amartei revealed that what he came up with exceeded his expectations. He said:

“After almost chopping my fingers off several times, the results from this version exceeded my expectations! All the mechanisms worked smoothly and from an anthropometric POV, it was a success. I felt I was finally getting somewhere, and this feeling fuelled me some more.”

On Saturday, September 11, the man ran the first test on the aircraft and it was a success to a great extent. He spoke about his challenges:

The freewheeling unit engaged and disengaged effectively. The tail rotor transmission was able to hit the right RPM and withstood stresses caused by the large centrifugal force. Everything worked well except for some vibrations caused by its cantilever design. The engine also struggled to get the main rotors to the right RPM range to generate enough lift because of its weight.”

Below are some of the reactions to his work:

Dennis Duffour said: