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Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

thenationalnews.com

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Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#141

Post by JabavuAdams »

vagrantJin wrote: post #48

Saw the "English version" of Indian news articles keep refering to the guy as a high school dropout in the headlines and sub headings. That's a mighty odd description that has nothing to do with the incident. I found that rather derisive and left a bitter aftertaste. Education does not neccesarily prevent accidents. Even spacecraft, built by the best engineers in the world, with the best materials, tested for years,…

No, it's a compliment in this context. Like, look what he managed to do even though he's a high-school dropout.

EDIT> I mean, before he got himself killed.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#142

Post by thejohnconway »

JamesSwift wrote: post #131
tyingq wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Safety is pretty easy, just envision what would happen if you fucked up I do see what you mean, but you can still get hurt even if you do everything "right". Angle grinders, for example, can shatter even if you don't break any safety rules. Hopefully your safety equipment works, but really hard shards flying around at 10,000 rpm are unpredictable.

Or kickback from a table saw. Or when I almost took my hand off when a chopsaw hit a knot in a 4x4 with such force that it deformed the metal and bounced my hand toward the blade.

Seems like the first safety rule for woodworking should be: don’t use a table saw.

Although the only carpenter I’ve worked with that had a missing digit had ground his thumb off with a belt sander. He didn’t speak English, and mimed the accident to me with our belt sander. I felt a bit sick.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#143

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

wolfretcrap wrote: post #34
wincy wrote: post #15

He didn't have a helmet or so much as a seatbelt in the helicopter. The tail rotor flew off, hit the main rotor at a high speed, which knocked him sideways, out of the fuselage. It was at this point his head came into contact with the spinning main rotor, likely killing him instantly. A seatbelt seems like it would have saved his life. It was recorded, which is how I know this, I honestly wouldn't suggest looking for…

I am also a farmer and inventor based in India. Problem is that we do not have many tools, indian made tools cost 3-4x of Chinese tools and have 2x worse quality on average 80% things which exist in West (made in China) does not exist in India on top India doesn't make many things. Plus we suffer from too many middlemen problem, where the end product is inflated away beyond the affordability of masses. Not everything…

> Surprisingly no startup has taken this issue seriously.

There are few tiny startups catering to small niche e.g. https://diy-india.com sells tiny screws, shafts etc. for reasonable price. But they hardly get the support needed to scale up to something like McMaster-Carr, Which the startups emulating western startups or EdTech startups get in India.

With Chinese eCommerce sites banned, The time for entering this market has never been more lucrative.

P.S. I run a validation platform and I have started to track this need-gap - https://needgap.com/problems/284-online-marketplace-for-hard...

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#144

Post by sudosysgen »

e3bc54b2 wrote: post #77
wolfretcrap wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I get frustrated sometimes when the parts I need have to ship from China and take a month. But they are cheap and they’ll arrive eventually. This remind me of the time when some local makers were ordering parts from aliexpress it was talking on average 30-40 days to arrive at their door and they were only ordering the parts that could not be substituted easily. Then one day government of India decided to ban aliexpr…

I was not aware Aliexpress got banned. What is the next best alternative?

Perhaps Taobao?

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#146

Post by JamesSwift »

thejohnconway wrote: post #142
JamesSwift wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or kickback from a table saw. Or when I almost took my hand off when a chopsaw hit a knot in a 4x4 with such force that it deformed the metal and bounced my hand toward the blade.

Seems like the first safety rule for woodworking should be: don’t use a table saw. Although the only carpenter I’ve worked with that had a missing digit had ground his thumb off with a belt sander. He didn’t speak English, and mimed the accident to me with our belt sander. I felt a bit sick.

That incident with the chopsaw shook me sufficiently enough that I returned the saw and haven't used a tool with a powered, spinning blade since. If I get another power tool it will be a sawstop.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#147

Post by mekkkkkk »

wolfretcrap wrote: post #34
wincy wrote: post #15

He didn't have a helmet or so much as a seatbelt in the helicopter. The tail rotor flew off, hit the main rotor at a high speed, which knocked him sideways, out of the fuselage. It was at this point his head came into contact with the spinning main rotor, likely killing him instantly. A seatbelt seems like it would have saved his life. It was recorded, which is how I know this, I honestly wouldn't suggest looking for…

I am also a farmer and inventor based in India. Problem is that we do not have many tools, indian made tools cost 3-4x of Chinese tools and have 2x worse quality on average 80% things which exist in West (made in China) does not exist in India on top India doesn't make many things. Plus we suffer from too many middlemen problem, where the end product is inflated away beyond the affordability of masses. Not everything…

I read somewhere about the postal network in India and how it suffered from a widespread lack of organized addresses. If it's still true, perhaps this is a contributing factor to why it might be hard to keep up and achieve scale for eBay clones?

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#148

Post by jacquesm »

bruce343434 wrote: post #101
jacquesm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If not on this flight then on one of the subsequent ones, experimental helicopters are not something for those not schooled in materials science. The good news is that nobody else got injured or killed, that could have easily happened. When I built that windmill I spent hours planning individual welds, ensuring no inclusions, grinding the mating surfaces to get a perfect fit before welding, annealing them properly, m…

How much power did it generate?

Nominally 2500 Watts (design power), in practice about 1500 to 2000 Watts, during that gust it maxed out the meter at 5 KW, so no idea how much more but quite a bit more (I never expected that or I would have picked the range a bit different).

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#149

Post by jacquesm »

system2 wrote: post #96
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a technicality: this wasn't an invention, this was just poor execution. Same with the electric Tuk Tuk earlier, the line between re-implementation and invention is apparently blurring, personally I feel that the term 'invention' should be saved for things that were not done before.

These inventors are usually from very poor countries trying to replicate a known vehicle. I strongly believe most of them are doing it to get some sort of recognition or to get funded to achieve financial freedom (or to find a job?). Tuk Tuk didn't show anything extra other than having solar panels on the sides. Simply, slapping several panels to a solar charger for lithium battery pack to operate an ebike-ish drive…

There are quite a few professionally manufactured solar TukTuks.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#150

Post by benhurmarcel »

wincy wrote: post #55
wolfretcrap wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also a farmer and inventor based in India. Problem is that we do not have many tools, indian made tools cost 3-4x of Chinese tools and have 2x worse quality on average 80% things which exist in West (made in China) does not exist in India on top India doesn't make many things. Plus we suffer from too many middlemen problem, where the end product is inflated away beyond the affordability of masses. Not everything…

Sorry to hear that. It’s definitely a tragic story. I ordered some things from McMaster Carr just the other day and it arrived within a few days. I get frustrated sometimes when the parts I need have to ship from China and take a month. But they are cheap and they’ll arrive eventually. It’s definitely sad to see genius wasted because the tools just sometimes aren’t available in places like India. Thanks for this info…

Even in Europe we don’t have an equivalent to McMaster Carr. We can certainly procure the materials we need, but as far as I know there’s nothing quite practical like that US shop.
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