Homebuilt Helicopters

John Uptigrove Born: India Primarily active in: Canada 1964 - 2018  Uptigrove was born April 19, 1964, in Mahabaleshwar, India (south of Mumbai) to missionary parents. The family returned to Canada in 1976 and Uptigrove grew up in Three Hills, Alberta, and then obtained a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Calgary in 1987. He began his career with Nova Chemicals, but soon pursued his passion for helicopters by establishing Innovator Technologies to design and manufacture ultralight helicopters. Uptigrove began with the open frame Mosquito kit (later designated the Mosquito Air), which first became available in 2002 for $20,000 USD and was under the 254 lb. (115kg) ultralight empty weight limit. He partnered with Dwight Junkin of Composite FX in Trenton, Florida, to develop the enclosed XE and XEL (with floats to again qualify as an ultralight) models in 2004 for $23,000 USD. The 2-stroke piston-powered kits took 200–300 hours to build, or Innovator Technologies wou...

Helipad at Zhengzhou Commercial Office Towers By Asymptote Architecture Qatari mansion estate with heliport   5422 Schulmeyer Gulch Rd

HANGZHOU | China Resources Liangzhu MixC Wuhan Yangtze River Center

Alibaba Nanjing Jiangsu HQ with helipad in China Parco Tecnologico degli Erzelli / Erzelli Smart City with helipad in Genoa Italy

A shesi Design Lab mobile summer project is back, and with it comes some interesting projects being run by our very own students here, in Ashesi University. The Ashesi Design Lab, in its mission to encourage individuals to design, think and innovate, host the mobile summer project for students who wish to work on projects they couldn’t work on during normal school period, due to time constraints. One of such students is Nii Amartei Amarteifio ’21, who turned his love for aeronautics and technology, into a single seater ultralight helicopter, which he built over the summer break. Take-off, as he calls it came out of his love for building things and technology, leading to the birth of Ghana’s first homemade helicopter. The project involved extensive research into aeronautics and mechanical engineering, areas Nii has a lot of interest in. the research yielded results which led him to draw up sketches and build 3D models the aircraft, all of which requiring his extensive knowledge of Mathe...