The engine is from a roadcutter, the wings are burlap, the wheels are borrowed from a rickshaw: a popcorn seller has caught the attention of the Pakistan Air Force by building his own plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tale of Muhammad Fayyaz \nhas captured the hearts of many in a nation where millions, just like \nhim, have limited access to education and are fighting for \nopportunities.The 32-year-old said he had dreamed of joining the air \nforce as a child, but his father died while he was in still in school, \nforcing him to drop out at the eighth grade and do odd jobs to feed his \nmother and his five younger siblings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an adult, his passion \nfor flying remained undiminished, so he took a wild gamble on a new \ndream and put everything he had into creating his own craft.By day he \nworked as a popcorn seller, by night as a security guard, saving every \nrupee he could.The first thing he had to acquire was information \nbeginning with watching episodes of the National Geographic Channel\u2019s \nAir Crash Investigation for insight into thrust, air pressure, torque, \npropulsion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was literally in the air. I couldn\u2019t feel anything\n else,\u201d Fayyaz said of his first flight in a machine he learned to build\n mainly from viewing TV clips and online blueprints.But Fayyaz insists \nhe flew and his claim is being taken seriously by the air force, whose \nrepresentatives have now visited him multiple times, even issuing a \ncertificate to commend his work, he revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There has been a \nsteady stream of visitors wanting to view his creation, which now sits \nin the empty courtyard of his three-room home in the village of Tabur in\n central Punjab province.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cheap internet access in a nearby city \nhelped fill the gaps, with Fayyaz claiming he spliced blueprints of \nplanes he found online for his own creation.He sold a piece of family \nland, and took out a 50,000 rupee loan from a micro-finance NGO, which \nhe is still paying off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He used his meagre funds creatively, \nbuying burlap sacks wholesale and persuading a kind workshop employee \nwho had seen him scouting for materials to build him a propeller.There \nwas trial and error. Some equipment needed to be replaced, designs had \nto be altered, the wiring had to be reworked.His family worried he was \nobsessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI kept telling him to stop. I kept telling him to \nconcentrate on his family and work, he was being crazy over nothing. But\n he didn\u2019t listen to a single word,\u201d his mother, Mumtaz Bibi, recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fayyaz\n claims his friends helped him to block a small road which he used as a \nrunway for that first flight attempt in February.The plane reached \n120kph before taking off, Ameer Hussain, a witness who claims to have \nridden alongside the plane in a motorcycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the attempt made \nFayyaz bold enough to want to try again in front of the rest of his \nvillage, many of whom had mocked his efforts.He picked March 23, \nPakistan Day, for the unveiling. Police said hundreds of people crowded \naround his tiny plane, many clutching national flags.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But before \nFayyaz could even start the engine, the police arrived and arrested him,\n confiscating his plane.\u201cI felt as though I had committed one of the \nworst acts in the world, as though I am the worst person in Pakistan,\u201d \nhe explained, adding: \u201cI had been locked up with criminals.\u201d The court \nreleased him with a 3,000 rupees fine.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The engine is from a roadcutter, the wings are burlap, the wheels are borrowed from a rickshaw: a popcorn seller has caught the attention of the Pakistan Air Force by building his own plane. The tale of Muhammad Fayyaz has captured the hearts of many in a nation where millions, just like him, have limited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60804,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60802\/revisions\/60804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}