A man who built a plane on his Mumbai rooftop | Hacker News Reader

A man who built a plane on his Mumbai rooftop

bbc.com

139 pointsdnyanesh52 comments

Isn't it true that in the US a homemade airplane is relatively easily registered without much hassle? Just remember reading about airplane kits and whatnot.

I don't understand the aviation minister's concern that "he'll crash". Is it fear of embarrassing the country or actual concern for protecting the guy's life? Or would the registration imply endorsement of safety and put others' lives at risk?

One of the biggest controls on recreational flying in the US for folks I know is the difficulty in getting life insurance coverage. It's a rather effective market restraint: if you're wealthy enough to afford the hobby, you're also likely keen on providing for your family.

Yup. See: https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/aircraft_certifica...

Looks like it's $5.

The FAA's philosophy, in a phrase, is "it's your funeral". In other words, the FAA only regulates airborne activity that is likely to harm others.

Kits, yes. Many inspections during build processare can be done by technical counslers who have built a kitplane before.

You can get a registration, but you can't fly w/o passing an FAA inspection first.

The US has about 33,000 currently registered homebuilt aircraft. There’s a lot of them!

For some years when I was growing up, five homebuilt aircraft were built for every one traditionally manufactured general avaition aircraft.

Most of these were built from kits or from plans, but there are still crazy people who make their own designs. My absolute favorite is the impossible Facetmobile[1]

[1] http://www.facetmobile.com

Just curious about your description of the Facetmobile as "impossible"... do you believe the video of it flying is faked?

Probably in reference to another faceted plane that basically was aerodynamically unstable, the F-117. Which was called the hopeless diamond.

"...PMO has pulled up top officials of the DGCA - aviation regulator -- and asked them to follow a procedure to clear Yadav's project expeditiously. After several meetings between the DGCA and Yadav on Monday, the regulator said it would register his six-seater aircraft and would ensure its air-worthiness without any further delay."

More: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation...

Just out of curiosity, I went to their website at http://www.thrustaircraft.com/. There's this quote that caught my attention: Talk To Yourself Once In A Day.. Otherwise You May Miss Meeting An Excellent Person in this World - Swami Vivekananda

This is my favorite rooftop airplane:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7042005,-74.0081902,115m/dat...

> He has spent about $800,000 of his own, and his family's money, and has sold properties and pawned family jewellery to fund his dream.

> "In India, innovation by commoners like me is not taken seriously. [...]"

Actually (I think I agree with you), my impression is that just like stories in the US and UK, it is taken all too seriously in India. That's not necessarily a bad thing... it's just art and not designing a safe airplane. It's not actually innovation, if it doesn't work, but I hope the publicity is worth it!

"Mr Yadav is now back on the roof, working on a prototype for his next 19-seater plane", eeek!

"You know, I think I would make aviation history in India, if they allow me to take the plane up", but perhaps not the kind of history that he would want to make. Risking his own life is one thing, but others?

> It's not actually innovation, if it doesn't work

Well it's not going to be innovation even if it does work. The technological progress of a hundred years and hundreds of billions of dollars of continuous refinement in aviation is insane. He's not going to be able to improve on a single bolt, let alone a whole frame, for a million bucks. Probably not for a billion bucks.

I mean, kudos for the guy for doing his thing and I don't mean to be hard on him but geeze. It's entrepreneurship and can-do spirit, which is great, but it's not innovation.

If the dude refined a kit and is able to create a relatively safe DIY plane for under 100k in parts isn’t that an innovation?

For that money you can purchase several safe planes.

Can you really get a functioning single prop with new or decent functionally usable used parts that is completely flyable and safe enough for regulations for under 100k?

In the US there is a category called "light sport aircraft" where there are some examples under $100k and many under $150k.

https://generalaviationnews.com/2015/10/12/four-lsa-under-96...

Those are also prices for a new aircraft, used go lower.

Enough economies of scale to make this kind of business pretty much unviable? Maybe. I’m pretty sure you can still buy car kits from car kit companies that are more expensive than a good Honda because hobbyists enjoy building cars from “scratch”. It does decrease the market value of the proposition sitgnificantly though if you are only focused on hobbyists.

$100k isn't particularly cheap for a DIY kit plane. Planes are cheap, it's everything else that's expensive.

http://www.aircraftdealer.com/aircraft_for_sale/Cessna_150_1...

Presumably he means "not well connected or from the right family / caste". It's a very class-driven society.

Its not class-driven, but caste-driven society.

That's quite a black and white view of things, which may have been true >100 years ago. Today there are wealthy people in the lowest castes and poor people in the highest castes. Money and power takes precedence over caste.

> A local newspaper and a news channel picked up the story. The throng turned into a flood of visitors taking selfies with the plane. India's aviation minister came visiting, as did senior officials and a bevy of businessmen.

> Mr Yadav says he's now ready to commercially build India's first indigenous planes. Investors have shown interest. The local BJP-led government has promised him 157 acres of land to set up a factory to make 19-seater aeroplanes.

While your point is understood, he does seem to be being taken somewhat seriously.

That is, in fact, what I mean.

He is claiming he is a commoner, and he is claiming he is not being taken seriously; I do not think either of those claims hold water.

My very first question on reading the headline was, but how will you get it down

Then I read the article:

> Incredulous friends and family members asked the young pilot how he planned to bring the plane down once it was complete.

Good to know I'm not alone!

Great article.

TL;DR according to image caption:

> The plane was dismantled on the roof and lowered down by crane

Clearly you just fly it off. Trial by fire!

I wonder who the fugitive billionaire is who has his private Airbus parked in Mumbai airport?

Maybe this guy should strip it for parts.

Name checks out.

Vijay Mallya.

http://indianexpress.com/photos/picture-gallery-others/vijay...

I love the seatbelt on the double bed!

Either this website registers a new history with every scroll down the page or it hijacks the back button so that pressing back scrolls you back up the page until you've reached the top. I've never seen this functionality before.

Yeah, it's horrific

Reminds me of Peter Sripol, a young dude whose built one primarily of styrofoam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6CS-YJ3_VU

Just a quick look at the design reveals the rear wheels are nowhere near the center of gravtity. This is important if you want to rotate on take off at reasonable speeds and land smoothly. He should know such basic stuff if he really flies for a living. Also the engine lacks cooling obviously. Cant‘t take such stories serious, as in some way they discredit real Indian engineers who build stuff, including planes, that are much more refined than this comedy. On a nerd level of course, I think I like this guy for not caring and just trying. Then again the article is framed as if he was some kind of bright example for India.

Not sure how you can tell the cofg just by looking at it. Looks to me like theyre in roughly the correct position. I wonder if the engine is watercooled.

He should publish his schematics online. They should allow him to test it. If he dies, so be it. That Virgin Galactic pilot died – testing aeronautical prototypes is dangerous. Just because it is dangerous doesn't mean you have to prevent every maverick from trying. Of course, he should fly it himself and not get someone else to test it. Also, he should just fly it surreptitiously, if he's that confident.

It's not just himself he is putting in danger. There are people surrounding the airport that could be hurt in a crash. If he were able to go to an airport with no people around then it could be safe. I'm not very familiar with India's geography, but I doubt he could easily find an airport that isn't surrounded by people.

The Virgin Galactic crash was during an approved test flight from the FAA. That means that the FSDO (flight standards district office) was satisfied with their design process and believed that they had taken necessary precautions (like testing it in the desert). The VG plane was designed by a team of engineers, and this plane was designed by a pilot (contrary to popular belief, pilots are not all-knowing).

India has a similar requirement, and their regulators say this guy doesn't meet the standards. Is it because of corruption? Is it because of incompetency and being unwilling to waste their time to examine his plane? Or is it because they looked at it and know that his design is actually unsafe?

I don't know the real answer. The article claims they aren't giving him a fair shake. There are convincing arguments in this thread that the plane won't fly well.

> I'm not very familiar with India's geography, but I doubt he could easily find an airport that isn't surrounded by people.

It is currently parked at Mumbai airport, which is surrounded by Dharavi: an extremely densely populated area. According to Wikipedia, Dharavi has a population density of over 277,136 people per sq km.

It's also where the tail is compared to the main wheels. When you want to take off the pilot moves the elevator on the tail which pushes the tail down causing the nose to lift up pivoting on the rear wheels. If you look at a pic of a normal plane https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Cessna.f... you don't have to push down too hard on the tail to lift the nose.

In the Indian guys design the tail is closer to the wheels and the engine sticks out a lot in front so you'd need a lot of force https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/14A54/producti...

It might still take off but you'd need to be quite fast to get enough downforce on the tail. I wonder if they'll get to try.

There's video of him driving it quite fast down the runway: https://youtu.be/1dLAmhDWEE8?t=27s

Have you ever seen a 150 in real life? There's nothing in the tailcone. If you had a battery and some avionics boxes in there, the you could probably move the tail a few feet towards the front to achieve the same moment.

You simply can't guess the balance from a picture.

I learnt to fly in a 150. Yeah you can't tell exactly where the balance is from a picture and it depends where you've put the luggage and so on.

Edit: Pausing the video at 32s it seems he's pulled back on the stick and managed to lift the front wheel a few inches https://youtu.be/1dLAmhDWEE8

He fully deflected the elevator and bounced the nose gear. With zero passengers. You put 6 adults and a co-pilot forward of the rear gear and I bet even bouncing will be out of the question. But we don't know if the ground speed was even representative of take off, so we're all just guessing here. With regard to cooling you can see an evolution here in the BBC photos: the first two images show no cooling ducts on either side of the TAC-003 engine compartment, but later images show several. I think geff82 is probably spot on about the design.

Yeah, the parents post smells suspiciously of alternative, possibly prejudiced, motives. We have no idea about the density distribution of the plane to say where the center of gravity is.

If you put the main center of lift (wings) offset from the center of mass, you will have a VERY difficult time flying!

Because the CoG should be about 1/3 to 1/2 of a chord from the leading edge of the wing. This is a bit harder to eyeball with swept wings, but yes, it really looks like this thing is going to have some trouble rotating.

Is the builder doing something different that would change this? I don't know. The nose of the plane looks a little 'long' if he's using a piston engine as the article suggests, and I don't see any pitots sticking out. It looks like a plane, but there are some weird details that just don't make sense.

The proof in the plane is in the flying, and according to the article, this plane never flew. I'd really like to see a flight test before giving this guy credit for building a plane.

Has this plane ever flown?

This plane cannot fly until the DGCA (aviation regulatory authority of India) registers it.

The PM of India has urged the DGCA to to clear this project expeditiously.

> This plane cannot fly until the DGCA (aviation regulatory authority of India) registers it.

It is permitted to fly it under 20 feet without DGCA registration.

Cant be too sure but there seems to be something off about the math in the dollar amount... The article says he spent $800,000. Lets assume the going rate of USD->INR is 1->60 (it is really 64 but I love easy math!) that would mean he spent 48mil Rupees making a plane, at that price he could have owned 16 or so cessna 172's. Just food for thought.

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