The 88-year-old Russian man, who gained local fame to build his own aircraft, died after trying to take off on a homemade helicopter.
A man, a resident of the Omtoninsky district in the Kirov region of western Russia, attempted to fly on a self-constructed aircraft on Thursday, the Volga Regional Transportation Prosecutor’s Office said in a news release on Friday.
However, he added that the helicopter self-destructed during takeoff.
The aircraft could not be lifted, and instead “while the engine was on the ground, while the engine power was being built, the main rotor blades were separated. This caused injuries to the pilot born in 1937,” district emergency services told Russia’s state-run news agency Ria Novosti on Friday.
The man was taken to Omtoninsky District Hospital, the Regional Traffic Prosecutor’s Office said. However, he passed away several hours later, Ria Novosti reported.
The vehicle is unregistered and the situation of the case is being investigated, the prosecutor’s office added.
Ria Novosti named The Dead Man Vladimir Trapeznikov, citing law enforcement.
According to local media and social media channels, he was a self-taught inventor who dreamed of becoming a pilot.
He eventually became a driver for a logging company, but he gained local fame to build flying machines.
According to Ria Novosti, the successful flight of the homemade plane began appearing in short films in 1985 at “Panorama” cinemas and TV News Reels.
According to reports, Trapeznikov died after building a total of five aircraft and attempting to launch his latest work.
He is not the first person to take him into the sky on his own plane.
The British man spent his spare time while building a plane in his yard for his family during the coronavirus pandemic.
Ethiopians built a DIY plane for almost two years, using 10 years of research, aviation manuals and YouTube tutorials to fly to their wedding in 2015.
