A self taught maker from Badong county in Hubei has flown a homemade electric board over the Yangtze, along city streets and through a canyon. Video of the flight, posted under the handle Ayu, has drawn about four million likes on Douyin and attention from state broadcasters. The board began as a replica of the glider ridden by the Green Goblin in Spider Man.

Getting there took two versions and a fire. The first carried five jet engines, enough thrust to lift three adults, and burnt its fuel lines and wiring in the first full test. He then fed the test data to an AI agent, according to Jimu News, which traced the failure to engines mounted too close together, so hot exhaust bounced off the ground and back into the intakes.

The same analysis recommended dropping jets for electric drive. And the second board carries ten brushless power units, each rated above 30 kilograms of thrust, with a peak current of 2,000 amperes. He says the combined thrust exceeds the weight of four adults.

Control is the hard part. With the throttle on a finger ring, a small shift in body weight sends the board drifting, and his first attempt ended with bent rods, a sprained wrist and a scraped knee. He built a monitoring rig from two phones that watches the craft and calls corrections through Bluetooth earbuds, telling him to shift his weight or bend a knee.

After about ten days of practice he flew over the river at Badong, through the town and along the Baren River scenic area. A staff member there told Jimu News that the team spent four or five hours on site and took off from a clearing near the visitor centre. She said the flight covered about 300 metres in a little over two minutes before he landed on a platform in the canyon.

The performance figures are his own. No telemetry has been published, and there is no independent measurement of speed, altitude or endurance. But a local executive who helped arrange sites and equipment told Jimu News that he filed with the relevant authorities before flying and was cautious each time.

The board follows a run of stunts. He has sent a homemade shuttle towards 40,000 metres under a helium balloon, jumped from a helicopter in a jet wing at 340 kilometres an hour and lifted a furnished living room into the clouds by balloon. He has also crashed a jet aircraft and lost a 20 tonne boat, leaving him with 2.4 million yuan of debt that he says he has largely repaid.

That history is the reason to read the video carefully. An earlier wing jump came within 600 metres of the ground before a reserve parachute opened, and the first board caught fire on the ground. None of this is certified hardware, no regulator has approved it for sale, and the flights were arranged rather than tested to an airworthiness standard.

What the project does show is how far one person can get with off the shelf motors, two phones and a model that reads flight data. So the interesting question is not whether the board matches a certified aircraft, but whether these tools shorten the path for the next maker. And for personal flight the binding constraint stays where it has always been, which is safety rather than lift.

He says he is still testing and wants to fly higher.

• A self taught Hubei maker flew a homemade electric board over the Yangtze and through a canyon

• The second version uses ten brushless thrusters and draws up to 2,000 amperes at peak

• A two phone AI rig coaches him in flight through Bluetooth earbuds

• Speed, altitude and endurance figures are unverified, and nothing here is certified

Source: Jimu News