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That's actually not necessarily a bad thing and may be intentional, as long as it doesn't make it too heavy for the engine. You want the center of mass to be very close to the center of lift. It's been a while since I've taken classes on aerodynamics but I believe on a typical airfoil that is somewhere just forward of the center of the wing.
Well as long as the engine is underpowered it's all just a crock of shit. He will never make it fly as long as he doesn't take empirical notes and study what goes wrong.
Impressive that East-Berliners were smart enough to build a powered Delta wing using a lawnmower and some tarp and flee to the West.
East German two stroke engines redefined what power output was thought possible from two stroke engines at the time. It's not quite the same but the big factor is probably the available engines for any Upendo models.
Look man let’s not make this all complicated. Our goal here is to make it RESEMBLE an airplane in overall shape. Squint your eyes. Does it look like a plane? Sorta? Good enough then.
Considering they didn't even have independent ailerons or a rudder, thus making the plane impossible to steer in the air, I doubt that level of engineering even crossed their minds. Over a hundred years of aeronautical information and this is the best they could come up with? Holy shit.
The angle of incidence of those wings... probably will create way too much drag... also don't like how the airflow will come back and slap the empenage...
If you want to get all aerodynamical about it:
1. Take-off run is far too short.
2. Dude’s rolling down the runway with full up elevator, keeping the tail glued to the ground and the wing fully stalled.
3. Ski jump adds significant stress as demonstrated by the left-side landing gear folding.
For your next attempt, friend - get a much longer runway, get more power, hold the elevator at neutral and allow the tail to come up, and let the plane fly off on its own. You cannot pull an airplane into the air using arm strength.
Also look at the tail wing and restructure its positioning compared to the rest of the vehicle. It's acting like a car spoiler which is adding drag and reducing lift.
His props are also too small at the wrong pitch !!! And of course, overpowered always better then under powered I'd rather be a rocket then a stone in the air !!!!!
The tail kick at the end doesn’t help much either. As bad as losing the landing gear was, it could have still flown without.
But when the tail wheel hits the ramp, it pushes the nose straight down.
It seems like ditching the ramp would make failures non-catastrophic as well. Might be easier to modify the existing plane after a failure to take off than to rebuild it from scratch each time with a broken arm to boot.
Gonna nitpick, but it's just HMS Queen Elizabeth. The carrier is named after the pre-WW1 Dreadnought. Which was (obviously) named after the only Queen Elizabeth we'd had up until that point.
Np, probably pretty common. The original HMS QE probably isnt that widely known unless you're into those sorts of things, and people might not think they'd name their newest, largest vessel after a queen 4 centuries gone.
That's more a matter of not having enough space to get up to speed. This thing looked like it was near its top speed already, so a longer runway wouldn't have helped much.
Just looking at it, it was pretty easy to see straight away it didn't have a lot of power and was pretty heavy. I would have been very surprised if it had done much better than it did in the end :-(
That engine is smaller than you'd typically see on a paramotor, and with a framework that looked like it was largely made out of steel, with solid rubber wheels, pretty chunky looking suspension. The damage done when it hit the ramp gives a clue to its weight / rigidity ratio.
Also, the narrator was being a little generous when she said "a few glorious seconds, Upendo was airborne" I think "for about 3/4 of a second, Upendo hadn't landed yet" would be fairer :-/
If *I* were making this, I'd be stripping off *everything* I could. Forget suspension and those large wheels, launch it off a rail. Also get rid of the cowling, it's not going fast enough that the weight is worth it.
Of course, using lighter materials is the other major place for some wins, but I'm guessing he's limited by what he can find to make it out of.
Once you've got something that can be flown as a kite in a stiff breeze, then you've got something that might fly under power.
I'm currently working on a SupER sEcrEt project to make an [autorotating giro-kite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_kite) with a hypothetical view to scaling it up to carry me aloft into the blue yonder as a girocopter. My materials are cardboard and plastic straws and I *still* think it's too heavy. I'm trying to work out ways to make it a lot lighter without snapping as soon as the air hits it :-P My current ideas are [thin plastic films](https://www.kitepackaging.co.uk/scp/clear-gift-and-card-bags/clear-florist-wrap/) for the shell, with polystyrene or some kind of expanding foam filling them out. I'm *also* trying to do as much as possible with materials I can fish out of a skip or find in my junk piles, so that applies some fun limitations for my imagination to work with :-D
It may have enough power (albeit, barely), but not with it's aerodynamics, or lack of it. He could've at least add some plastic wrapping to increase the performance, otherwise all these struts create a LOT of turbulent flows. Also, yeah, wheels seems to be solid resin and that'd weight way too much for their function.
There's also no vertical stabilizer, so it's pretty unsafe to pilot such a thing, especially with single motor plane, which creates a spinning air flow that needs to be counteracted. The elevators seem too big, I think, and the tail angle seems strange, creating a lot of downward force. And the angle of attack maybe a bit too high, making the tail wheel a bit higher might help.
Struts' massive parasitic drag doesn't really matter until you want to go fast. Not a big deal if you just want to take off.
It really does look like the lack of any power and an overabundance of weight were the culprits. I'm not sure how those wings were constructed, but they did have some camber and would probably work fine if it hadn't been so darn chonky.
Agreed on the complete unsuitability of the tail section.
Yes but those aircraft don't *need* the ramps to takeoff under normal conditions.
They also catch them with a dope ass wire, but you don't *have* to do that at a regular airport.
The ramp transition was too abrupt. The sharp change from level to angle tried to change the velocity vector direction near instantly. This rapid change pushed by the ramp caused a short, but intense acceleration up; thus a huge force from the ramp to the air frame.
The ramp’s force pushing the aircraft up buckled the left landing gear (and probably more but cannot see clearly).
Also, the horizontal stabilizer was fully deflected and the nose still pitched down. This shows there wasn’t enough pitch authority to overcome the CG in front of the CoL at that low speed.
They also had no real yaw authority either.
It didn’t look like there were any horizontal stabilizers on the tail to counter any rotation due to a mismatch between CG and CL (or vertical stabilizers for yaw, for that matter)
The back wheel also impacted the ramp at the end which definitely didn’t help with the nose dive, may have even initiated it
I have a mechanical engineering degree, but I did do one project with aeronautical engineers a while back. From what I understand, the wing profile can drastically change the amount of lift generated and there's a bunch of them.
Either the wings aren't designed well enough to create enough upward lift, it wasn't going fast enough, the craft was too heavy, or a combination of all of the above.
From the sounds of it, these guys are just kinda winging it (pun intended), so I'm going to guess all of the above.
I'd like to know more about it. Making an aeroplane isn't hard. I've done it. True I (mostly) followed the plans of a KR-2.
The science behind flight is well known.
I'm curious what this design was. Tubular construction can be fairly light weight.
That ceiling fan looking propeller...
Looks to me like it was too heavy & too underpowered for the relatively small wing area to generate enough lift.
Which is probably just as well since it was also not sturdy enough to survive hitting that ramp… 🫣
The wing design is.... interesting. It looks more like a sprint car downfoil more than an airfoil. It is reminiscent of an early VTOL/STOL design as well, the Ryan VZ-3, but his fan isn't big enough for that.
The overall shape and design is similar to many ultra light builds, but with shorter thicker wings.
Which is why I'm curious to know more. Was it a complete thumbsuck? Was he copying a plane he had access to?
I mean, I live in Africa.
Now Africa's a big place and even where I live isn't as rural looking as that.
Yeah, I've always been interested in flying and had my PPL before my driver's license. And as I said I had access to actual good plans when I built my first aeroplane, and I had help from an experienced pilot.
I built a bunch of small gliders, before that myself though.
But like someone else says there are people there with smart phones. The video itself is on the net. You can access the information you need.
I'm just really curious about this design, I'll admit I missed the *solid steel* wheels, but everything else looks sourced from somewhere. I said in a post just now the wing looks a lot like the Ryan VZ-3 STOL wing, or a Sprint Car wing. The tailless design is reminiscent of the Bleriot (although I see now those have more of a vertical stabilizer than I remembered ). The overall layout is similar to many ultra lite and bush aircraft.
I hope the guy survived and can try again, after looking some stuff up.
I hate to say it, because it does look like they really put some work into this, but it is likely a cargo cult plane. The builders had seen planes, they knew it needed wings, a prop and wheels, but they didn't understand how the parts worked and worked together.
I don't think this is cargo cult adjacent. I watched them a year or two back, but there's a ton of videos on youtube of these wacky African inventors with really crappy inventions. One of them landed a corrupt military contract for some fake exoskeletons and shitty scrap metal MRAPs.
Unfortunately, many Africans gobble it up.
https://youtu.be/Uw-SNfwaXpg
https://youtu.be/B21DoFCVLuM
Oh my thanks for sharing this, got a real laugh out of it. That exoskeleton video is insane. I can't imagine living in a place where the truth is so blatantly ignored and attacked (yes every country struggles with the truth but the case of the Ghanian blogger is incredible). All that military tech looked so stupid, but still when the cut to the American stuff it was shocking.
The *good news* is that he wasn't *on* the plane (you can see the empty pilot space in the video, and the narrator mentions that it's "Upendo is out of his hands and down what passes as a runway")
The bad news is that this guy could really do with some help from somebody with a little more experience and background knowledge before he's likely to make much progress :-(
How can you watch this video then presume this dude has plans to a KR-2? Look at their runway. A rational being would not frame their question with these assumptions if you're the kind of guy who makes building airplanes look easy. I'm sure you'd design all the flaps and control surfaces perfectly the first time.
It's a dude with a welder and access to a junkyard screwing around. Everything is heavy steel furniture pieces. Like you said he has a ceiling fan for a propeller. This is redneck engineering, Africa edition. He should try soapbox cars or rowboats first with his toy welder. I hope he doesn't die fucking around like this.
Show me where I said this is a KR-2, I said that to show I had an advantage.
You can look this stuff up on the internet, plenty people filming him with smart phones, and it's been posted to the internet.
That's why I said I'd like to know more, because this could be done without a lot of the mass. He has some of the right ideas.
I hope he survived and can try again, preferably having looked some stuff up.
I agree. I was fully expecting it to take off and gracefully soar the skies until it needed to land for a refuel. I think the next plane should feature the capability to refuel mid air so that it never needs to land again.
What movies have taught me is that you have to do these kinds of stunts next to a cliff. Upendo will run till the edge of the cliff and go down the cliff (Upendo is now called Downendo) as if the control is lost. The spectators are watching this in awe , as the plane disappears. Then after a few moments of "oh no"s and confused hand gestures, Upendo will soar into the sky, from the depths like a phoenix from its ashes (Upendo is now called Tornado).
The crowd is rejoicing.
What the video doesn't show is that the plane was going to fly beautifully if not for Harry Potter hiding in the bushes casting a spell right at the crucial moment...
*Upendo!*
How about instead of re-inventing flying, take all of the knowledge over the last century of flying and put it to good use. Apparently there’s zero lift with them wings or the cab is too heavy or any other number of things. Engine and propeller seem fine.
A controlled landing in that thing would be next to impossible anyway. Theres no vertical stabilizer. The pilot would have zero yaw control. Those two tiny vertical fins at either end of the horizontal stabilizer are far too small to do the job. They’re lucky they didn’t make it into the air.
Everyone is giving their expert takes but you're the first person to say it hasn't got a vertical stabiliser. The aircraft would probably work if it had that and an actual runway.
No moveable ailerons. No fuselage. No rudder. Stabilizer is a car spoiler. Used a ramp. Too heavy. Underpowered. Bad suspension.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mark Rober or someone tracks this dude down to help him. It’d be funny if he’s Tom Sawyering folks with these planes.
That was a VERY generous description of "A few seconds", unless she forgot to say "tenths of" in there.
Also, I want to hang out with the guy laughing at the end. I am pretty sure he has been Upendo's biggest supporter to this point, just so he can witness the crashes.
I think he's gonna need something with more power. Perhaps the Rotax 914, the horse power king.
[https://youtu.be/0L0N0yYeUuY](https://youtu.be/0L0N0yYeUuY)
This looks all wrong.
For a taildragger, the elevator is mounted at an angle that will never get it to “fly”. It also seems to be a flat piece with no aerodynamic properties. So it will never work.
The wings, on the other hand, are mounted with such a high angle of attack, that they will never produce lift - certainly not while the tail stays down. They’re in a permanent state of stall.
Hey Reddit
Let's put together a go fund me and make this man's dream come true
Cheapest ultra light kit is about $7k
https://www.teammini-max.com/online-store/aircraft-kits/1100r-mini-max/
The whole thing was held together by scotch tape. Look at the wheel base buckle as soon as he hits the ramp. Just give up homie, you don’t possess the facilities to make an object fly, obviously.
Let me detail just SOME of what's wrong with this design:
No rudder, so no yaw control and no ground steering
No elevators on the tail, so you're depending entirely on the ailerons for pitch control.
No identifiable control of the ailerons.
Yeah, this was a dumpster fire just waiting to light off.
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If at first you don’t succeed, keep doing the same thing over and over until you get so badly injured you can’t do it any more.
"should we get a prop engine with more than one piston?" No, it's spinning fast enough already
The wings obviously weigh a shit-ton in comparison to the thin wireframe fuselage.
That's actually not necessarily a bad thing and may be intentional, as long as it doesn't make it too heavy for the engine. You want the center of mass to be very close to the center of lift. It's been a while since I've taken classes on aerodynamics but I believe on a typical airfoil that is somewhere just forward of the center of the wing.
Well as long as the engine is underpowered it's all just a crock of shit. He will never make it fly as long as he doesn't take empirical notes and study what goes wrong. Impressive that East-Berliners were smart enough to build a powered Delta wing using a lawnmower and some tarp and flee to the West.
UPENDO got upended!
Upendo means love. I guess you need more than love to make your dreams take off.
Great, how is ~~Air Supply~~ Jennifer Warnes stuck in my head now? Love lift us up where weeeee belooooong!
East German two stroke engines redefined what power output was thought possible from two stroke engines at the time. It's not quite the same but the big factor is probably the available engines for any Upendo models.
I'm uncertain those wings are winged shaped, as in, do they even generate lift?
I can't be sure from the angle of the footage but the blades definitely don't. It's also missing a rudder and probably elevator.
Look man let’s not make this all complicated. Our goal here is to make it RESEMBLE an airplane in overall shape. Squint your eyes. Does it look like a plane? Sorta? Good enough then.
Considering they didn't even have independent ailerons or a rudder, thus making the plane impossible to steer in the air, I doubt that level of engineering even crossed their minds. Over a hundred years of aeronautical information and this is the best they could come up with? Holy shit.
The Dwight Brothers
and it still bent the second it hit the ramp 😂
Yeah, it definitely did the splits on the ramp. The whole right wheel was ripped off basically.
The angle of incidence of those wings... probably will create way too much drag... also don't like how the airflow will come back and slap the empenage...
The engine is spinning fast enough but the wheels are turning too slow.
Laughing out loud to this comment 😂
It was good enough for the wright brothers.
This is the wrong brother unfortunately
If you want to get all aerodynamical about it: 1. Take-off run is far too short. 2. Dude’s rolling down the runway with full up elevator, keeping the tail glued to the ground and the wing fully stalled. 3. Ski jump adds significant stress as demonstrated by the left-side landing gear folding. For your next attempt, friend - get a much longer runway, get more power, hold the elevator at neutral and allow the tail to come up, and let the plane fly off on its own. You cannot pull an airplane into the air using arm strength.
Also look at the tail wing and restructure its positioning compared to the rest of the vehicle. It's acting like a car spoiler which is adding drag and reducing lift.
Ass draggers need to lift up their ass.
His props are also too small at the wrong pitch !!! And of course, overpowered always better then under powered I'd rather be a rocket then a stone in the air !!!!!
The tail kick at the end doesn’t help much either. As bad as losing the landing gear was, it could have still flown without. But when the tail wheel hits the ramp, it pushes the nose straight down.
It seems like ditching the ramp would make failures non-catastrophic as well. Might be easier to modify the existing plane after a failure to take off than to rebuild it from scratch each time with a broken arm to boot.
Wile E. Coyote would agree.
Just like skateboarding!
Like the guy who built his own rocket to prove the earth was flat
And then he died.
Follow your dreams
No person in it.
"The engines roar to life.." *electric toothbrush noises*
Colgate airlines has a nice ring to it 🤣
If the plane needs a jump to get airborne, I don't think it is going to fly...
To be fair they used ramps on aircraft carriers in the past
Still do. HMS Queen Elizabeth II and HMS Prince of Wales EDIT: just been informed it's just the HMS Queen Elizabeth and not "II"
Bit disrespectful to use Her Majesty's corpse as a ramp...
They launched her at the funeral. Hilarity ensued.
As is tradition.
She is in using it anymore
Gonna nitpick, but it's just HMS Queen Elizabeth. The carrier is named after the pre-WW1 Dreadnought. Which was (obviously) named after the only Queen Elizabeth we'd had up until that point.
got it my mistake.
Np, probably pretty common. The original HMS QE probably isnt that widely known unless you're into those sorts of things, and people might not think they'd name their newest, largest vessel after a queen 4 centuries gone.
That's more a matter of not having enough space to get up to speed. This thing looked like it was near its top speed already, so a longer runway wouldn't have helped much. Just looking at it, it was pretty easy to see straight away it didn't have a lot of power and was pretty heavy. I would have been very surprised if it had done much better than it did in the end :-( That engine is smaller than you'd typically see on a paramotor, and with a framework that looked like it was largely made out of steel, with solid rubber wheels, pretty chunky looking suspension. The damage done when it hit the ramp gives a clue to its weight / rigidity ratio. Also, the narrator was being a little generous when she said "a few glorious seconds, Upendo was airborne" I think "for about 3/4 of a second, Upendo hadn't landed yet" would be fairer :-/ If *I* were making this, I'd be stripping off *everything* I could. Forget suspension and those large wheels, launch it off a rail. Also get rid of the cowling, it's not going fast enough that the weight is worth it. Of course, using lighter materials is the other major place for some wins, but I'm guessing he's limited by what he can find to make it out of. Once you've got something that can be flown as a kite in a stiff breeze, then you've got something that might fly under power. I'm currently working on a SupER sEcrEt project to make an [autorotating giro-kite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_kite) with a hypothetical view to scaling it up to carry me aloft into the blue yonder as a girocopter. My materials are cardboard and plastic straws and I *still* think it's too heavy. I'm trying to work out ways to make it a lot lighter without snapping as soon as the air hits it :-P My current ideas are [thin plastic films](https://www.kitepackaging.co.uk/scp/clear-gift-and-card-bags/clear-florist-wrap/) for the shell, with polystyrene or some kind of expanding foam filling them out. I'm *also* trying to do as much as possible with materials I can fish out of a skip or find in my junk piles, so that applies some fun limitations for my imagination to work with :-D
It may have enough power (albeit, barely), but not with it's aerodynamics, or lack of it. He could've at least add some plastic wrapping to increase the performance, otherwise all these struts create a LOT of turbulent flows. Also, yeah, wheels seems to be solid resin and that'd weight way too much for their function. There's also no vertical stabilizer, so it's pretty unsafe to pilot such a thing, especially with single motor plane, which creates a spinning air flow that needs to be counteracted. The elevators seem too big, I think, and the tail angle seems strange, creating a lot of downward force. And the angle of attack maybe a bit too high, making the tail wheel a bit higher might help.
I'd say he needs more wing area as well.. those wings look much too small and chunky..
Struts' massive parasitic drag doesn't really matter until you want to go fast. Not a big deal if you just want to take off. It really does look like the lack of any power and an overabundance of weight were the culprits. I'm not sure how those wings were constructed, but they did have some camber and would probably work fine if it hadn't been so darn chonky. Agreed on the complete unsuitability of the tail section.
only with aircraft that was known to be able to fly lol
Cope slopes, only weak ass virgin carriers rely on them
Well said
They were also using airplanes that they already knew could fly without the ramp.
Yes but those aircraft don't *need* the ramps to takeoff under normal conditions. They also catch them with a dope ass wire, but you don't *have* to do that at a regular airport.
Don't tell that to the British or Spanish navies. Their aircraft carriers have [ski-jumps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski-jump_(aviation)).
I do hate it when the airline says they "need a hand over here".
What went wrong, I mean it seemed such a solid Aircraft.
The ramp transition was too abrupt. The sharp change from level to angle tried to change the velocity vector direction near instantly. This rapid change pushed by the ramp caused a short, but intense acceleration up; thus a huge force from the ramp to the air frame. The ramp’s force pushing the aircraft up buckled the left landing gear (and probably more but cannot see clearly). Also, the horizontal stabilizer was fully deflected and the nose still pitched down. This shows there wasn’t enough pitch authority to overcome the CG in front of the CoL at that low speed. They also had no real yaw authority either.
Or, you know, a functional airfoil. Hard to fly without a source of lift.
You can make anything fly with a big enough engine.
Or the Kerbal Space Program solution: just add more boosters)
Don't forget struts!
This one seem to have enough struts already)
It didn’t look like there were any horizontal stabilizers on the tail to counter any rotation due to a mismatch between CG and CL (or vertical stabilizers for yaw, for that matter) The back wheel also impacted the ramp at the end which definitely didn’t help with the nose dive, may have even initiated it
I have a mechanical engineering degree, but I did do one project with aeronautical engineers a while back. From what I understand, the wing profile can drastically change the amount of lift generated and there's a bunch of them. Either the wings aren't designed well enough to create enough upward lift, it wasn't going fast enough, the craft was too heavy, or a combination of all of the above. From the sounds of it, these guys are just kinda winging it (pun intended), so I'm going to guess all of the above.
Just looking at it, it seems way too heavy and incredibly under-powered. Ultralights use bigger motors than this (I think).
I'd like to know more about it. Making an aeroplane isn't hard. I've done it. True I (mostly) followed the plans of a KR-2. The science behind flight is well known. I'm curious what this design was. Tubular construction can be fairly light weight. That ceiling fan looking propeller...
Im thinking the wings made out of old refrigerator parts probably were not aero dynamic enough to lift much :).
Well that depends, if it happened to be made from **Vance Refrigeration** parts it should work, those babies basically fly off the shelves ;D
Are you perchance, Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration?
r/unexpectedoffice
Haaaa
the wings were a flap assembly off a large plane.
Looks to me like it was too heavy & too underpowered for the relatively small wing area to generate enough lift. Which is probably just as well since it was also not sturdy enough to survive hitting that ramp… 🫣
The wing design is.... interesting. It looks more like a sprint car downfoil more than an airfoil. It is reminiscent of an early VTOL/STOL design as well, the Ryan VZ-3, but his fan isn't big enough for that. The overall shape and design is similar to many ultra light builds, but with shorter thicker wings. Which is why I'm curious to know more. Was it a complete thumbsuck? Was he copying a plane he had access to?
"making an aeroplane isn't hard" If only the Renaissance Italians could see us now lmao
You probably live in a country with an aerospace industry and I doubt these, admirably determined, folks do not.
But they have smart phones. So, they have access to the bulk of human aeronautics information.
Information is great, actual areoplan parts are better.
I mean, I live in Africa. Now Africa's a big place and even where I live isn't as rural looking as that. Yeah, I've always been interested in flying and had my PPL before my driver's license. And as I said I had access to actual good plans when I built my first aeroplane, and I had help from an experienced pilot. I built a bunch of small gliders, before that myself though. But like someone else says there are people there with smart phones. The video itself is on the net. You can access the information you need. I'm just really curious about this design, I'll admit I missed the *solid steel* wheels, but everything else looks sourced from somewhere. I said in a post just now the wing looks a lot like the Ryan VZ-3 STOL wing, or a Sprint Car wing. The tailless design is reminiscent of the Bleriot (although I see now those have more of a vertical stabilizer than I remembered ). The overall layout is similar to many ultra lite and bush aircraft. I hope the guy survived and can try again, after looking some stuff up.
I hate to say it, because it does look like they really put some work into this, but it is likely a cargo cult plane. The builders had seen planes, they knew it needed wings, a prop and wheels, but they didn't understand how the parts worked and worked together.
I don't think this is cargo cult adjacent. I watched them a year or two back, but there's a ton of videos on youtube of these wacky African inventors with really crappy inventions. One of them landed a corrupt military contract for some fake exoskeletons and shitty scrap metal MRAPs. Unfortunately, many Africans gobble it up. https://youtu.be/Uw-SNfwaXpg https://youtu.be/B21DoFCVLuM
Oh my thanks for sharing this, got a real laugh out of it. That exoskeleton video is insane. I can't imagine living in a place where the truth is so blatantly ignored and attacked (yes every country struggles with the truth but the case of the Ghanian blogger is incredible). All that military tech looked so stupid, but still when the cut to the American stuff it was shocking.
Ooof yeah that could be true.
I think you hit the nail on the head there, sadly.
The *good news* is that he wasn't *on* the plane (you can see the empty pilot space in the video, and the narrator mentions that it's "Upendo is out of his hands and down what passes as a runway") The bad news is that this guy could really do with some help from somebody with a little more experience and background knowledge before he's likely to make much progress :-(
Didn't look like anyone was onboard when it launched
You **bet** these folks do not. Or you doubt these folks do ~~not~~.
Grammar, how does that work
Powerful light weight engine is the biggest easy win.
look at the angle of his wings.... no plans where followed, lol
MacGyver did it with bamboo, canvas and duct tape. How hard can it be?
The wheels look to be made of solid steel.
How can you watch this video then presume this dude has plans to a KR-2? Look at their runway. A rational being would not frame their question with these assumptions if you're the kind of guy who makes building airplanes look easy. I'm sure you'd design all the flaps and control surfaces perfectly the first time. It's a dude with a welder and access to a junkyard screwing around. Everything is heavy steel furniture pieces. Like you said he has a ceiling fan for a propeller. This is redneck engineering, Africa edition. He should try soapbox cars or rowboats first with his toy welder. I hope he doesn't die fucking around like this.
Show me where I said this is a KR-2, I said that to show I had an advantage. You can look this stuff up on the internet, plenty people filming him with smart phones, and it's been posted to the internet. That's why I said I'd like to know more, because this could be done without a lot of the mass. He has some of the right ideas. I hope he survived and can try again, preferably having looked some stuff up.
I agree. I was fully expecting it to take off and gracefully soar the skies until it needed to land for a refuel. I think the next plane should feature the capability to refuel mid air so that it never needs to land again.
Wings look to be mounted upside down from what I can see.
Upendo
Upendon't
Upended
What movies have taught me is that you have to do these kinds of stunts next to a cliff. Upendo will run till the edge of the cliff and go down the cliff (Upendo is now called Downendo) as if the control is lost. The spectators are watching this in awe , as the plane disappears. Then after a few moments of "oh no"s and confused hand gestures, Upendo will soar into the sky, from the depths like a phoenix from its ashes (Upendo is now called Tornado). The crowd is rejoicing.
That's basically the plot to Backdoor Sluts 9
Orville and Wilbur Wrong
Welcome to Spirit Airlines
Apropos aircraft moniker 😂
[удалено]
Upend - doh!
What the video doesn't show is that the plane was going to fly beautifully if not for Harry Potter hiding in the bushes casting a spell right at the crucial moment... *Upendo!*
It's better to have it not take off then do take off. I wouldn't want to be inside that thing when it's starts falling apart in the sky.
There did seem to be a lot of unhappy shimmying on the take-off roll...
Just a reminder that just because something looks like an airplane doesn't mean it can fly like one.
Honestly this thing not getting too far off the ground was the only reason the dudes still alive
I mean... not being in the plane also helped a lot.
That’s really generous for a “few glorious seconds.” She should talk to my wife.
Airborne for a few seconds? Nah fam, that was just gravity doing it's thing.
“for a few glorious seconds”… you could roll a boulder down that hill and it would stay airborne for longer
>“for a few glorious seconds”… Looked like 0.5 seconds to me, that thing might have done better as a boulder
I could have run and jumped off of that launch ramp and stayed in the air longer.
easy D.I.Y plane tutorial (100.000 views) NOT CLICKBAIT
[Gabriel!](https://youtu.be/0L0N0yYeUuY)
Yes! "When he tested plane fourteen it looked very promising, until it didnt look promising at all"!
that was seven years ago... so did he fly?
It's the Dodo from GTA 3.
Holy shit this brought me back
How about instead of re-inventing flying, take all of the knowledge over the last century of flying and put it to good use. Apparently there’s zero lift with them wings or the cab is too heavy or any other number of things. Engine and propeller seem fine.
Just follow a published tutorial?
The propeller is *not* fine. Those are actually blades, not airfoils.
Ohh.. see I don’t know that. Dude needs to stop and build something else like an airboat, lol.
It’s as if he either don’t have access to the internet at all. Or is just extremely dense.
That's a bold engineer who puts a ramp on a runway. Gotta respect the dream. God speed.
Upendo is such an appropriate name.
SpaceX should hire these guys.
Definitely less explosions
Up and oh
Whoever made this is a resourceful technician, but not an engineer.
Lmao upendo! It ended up o’ the floor alright.
Underpowered
His landing gear collapsed on the ramp. If he had had the power to get airborne his landing would not have been great.
A controlled landing in that thing would be next to impossible anyway. Theres no vertical stabilizer. The pilot would have zero yaw control. Those two tiny vertical fins at either end of the horizontal stabilizer are far too small to do the job. They’re lucky they didn’t make it into the air.
Everyone is giving their expert takes but you're the first person to say it hasn't got a vertical stabiliser. The aircraft would probably work if it had that and an actual runway.
This was my first thought too, probably needs a bit more run way and to be lighter/ more aerodynamic
Also having wings that generate lift would be nice.
And the ground didn't look that smooth either.
No moveable ailerons. No fuselage. No rudder. Stabilizer is a car spoiler. Used a ramp. Too heavy. Underpowered. Bad suspension. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mark Rober or someone tracks this dude down to help him. It’d be funny if he’s Tom Sawyering folks with these planes.
So is this what happens when you build a plane based off of old grainy pictures but no knowledge of actual flight?
That was a VERY generous description of "A few seconds", unless she forgot to say "tenths of" in there. Also, I want to hang out with the guy laughing at the end. I am pretty sure he has been Upendo's biggest supporter to this point, just so he can witness the crashes.
"The engines roar to life..." The sound of a lawn mower engine in the background
Another dream dashed
I think he's gonna need something with more power. Perhaps the Rotax 914, the horse power king. [https://youtu.be/0L0N0yYeUuY](https://youtu.be/0L0N0yYeUuY)
Ok, he can have two lawn mower engines next time.
He was the Wrong brother.
The Wright Brotha’s
The wrong brothers
The take of isnt even long Enough to get going 😆
Hmmm, has he tried flapping two really big feathered wings?
No he watched South Park before he made attempt number 1
Nothing about that seemed like it was going to be able to fly.
Someone tell these guys to not use a ramp fml lol
Upendo was an unfortunate name choice...just saying.
'Gonnacrash' seemed a bit too on-the-nose.
That ‘For a few seconds’ is being very generous.
Call me crazy, but I think to take off an airplane needs to be going faster than a brisk walk.
Go home Wakanda air force you're drunk
They might want to study aircraft a little harder before building the next one
I was waiting for the glorious seconds where it was Air bound..
Upendo Airlines ? He should have been in the test flight. Might be the only chance he get to fly it.
Is that because once this thing takes off it will likely never need to touch down again?
Is this a recreation of the Wright Bros first attempts at flight?
Soaring with the buds.... 420
My African Brothers…..”I can unlock millions of pounds waiting for me in Zanzibar, to assist in my aircraft manufacture, if you send me your……”
Upendo was upended in the end.
The way the wheels bend when it hits the ramp gets me
"a few glorious seconds" .. yeah, even THAT was a generous description
Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up it’s bobsled time … COOL RUNNINGS!!!!!!!
Those are the heaviest duty aviation tires I've ever seen in my life. Guess they can't blow out when they are solid rubber.
“Who needs suspension”.
Planes shouldn't need kickers!
I'm no engineer, but shouldn't the wingspan be greater, among other things?
That’s not ‘airborne’. That’s falling, without style
Upendo didn’t fail, he just found 13 ways that won’t work.
And he did this all without reading one book on airplane design and engineering
This looks all wrong. For a taildragger, the elevator is mounted at an angle that will never get it to “fly”. It also seems to be a flat piece with no aerodynamic properties. So it will never work. The wings, on the other hand, are mounted with such a high angle of attack, that they will never produce lift - certainly not while the tail stays down. They’re in a permanent state of stall.
I’m pretty sure my toothbrush has more power than that thing.
Probably need to go a little faster than that..
I don't think this belongs here. This is basically how we learned to get a plane up. Loads of trial tests that failed.
“I am poor… I have nothing apart from sperm.”
Hey Reddit Let's put together a go fund me and make this man's dream come true Cheapest ultra light kit is about $7k https://www.teammini-max.com/online-store/aircraft-kits/1100r-mini-max/
Still more successful than Elon's shit
I think it's time he tried Hang gliding
The whole thing was held together by scotch tape. Look at the wheel base buckle as soon as he hits the ramp. Just give up homie, you don’t possess the facilities to make an object fly, obviously.
Everyone is cracking jokes but these guys got further than I would on my own. Great to see someone trying things out to see if it works.
Best aeroplane ive created was made out of paper, so hes already got me beat
Let me detail just SOME of what's wrong with this design: No rudder, so no yaw control and no ground steering No elevators on the tail, so you're depending entirely on the ailerons for pitch control. No identifiable control of the ailerons. Yeah, this was a dumpster fire just waiting to light off.
If we are being completely honest, the design was flawless. Wind conditions are what kept this plane grounded.
The laugh Stfu people that dude is much hardworking than some of you, watching his dream crashed