SHANGHAI — The buzzing of small airplanes is very rarely heard in China’s vast yet closed skies, and flying for the sheer joy of it is still a novelty. But that is slowly changing as enthusiastic do-it-yourselfers take to the sky by whatever means possible.

China is home to a widespread DIY culture fed by necessity (the mother of all invention) and innovation. These garage builders and innovators are, like their products, often called shanzhai. Literally translated, it means “mountain strongholds,” but it has come to mean nonprofessional or clandestine manufacturers turning out products from the basic to the highly sophisticated. These shanzhai often take familiar products, concepts and marketing memes and remake them with peculiar but innovative twists.

Aviation is by no means an exception, and it has its share of shanzhai builders. But there is more to it than that. China’s emerging aviator class is spreading its wings with a plethora of approaches, from the ramshackle to the sophisticated to the potentially revolutionary. They’re using everything imaginable, from old motorcycle engines to electric motors to even their own legs, like Mao Yiqing and his human-powered airplane shown above. You could easily plot these adventurous innovators on a graph, with the X axis showing their skill and the Y axis their financial means.

Occupying the lower right corner of that graph would be 20-year-old Wu Zhongyuan, a farmer from Henan province. He has since childhood dreamed of flying and spent three months and $1,600 building a shanzai helicopter. The airframe, if you could call it that, is fabricated from a steel scaffold. Power comes from an old motorcycle engine twirling wood blades. Zhongyuan claims the chopper will fly to 800 meters (2,600 feet), but so far hasn’t been able to prove it.

Provincial authorities have forbidden him from flying on safety grounds.

Photo of Mao Yiqing in his human-powered airplane courtesy Mao Yiqing.









Appearing at the upper right corner of our graph is Tian Yu, founder of Yuneec International and the man who wants to make electric airplanes a reality.

Tian, like many other DIY aviators, started out manufacturing model airplanes. His company, Helang, builds hundreds of thousands of kits a year. His first foray into electric flight came a few years ago when Yuneec launched an electric paramotor kit. The firm quickly got serious and brought a production-ready electric plane, the E430, to the big AirVenture aviation show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin last summer and made a couple of flights.

Tian is hardly alone in pursuing battery-powered flight; several electric airplanes were on-hand at AirVenture. But the E430 is the slickest of the bunch. It is a sleek V-tailed sport aircraft with room for two, and a 40-kilowatt (54-horsepower) electric motor. Power comes from a lithium-polymer battery pack the company claims recharges in three hours. Flight time ranges from 90 minutes to three hours, depending on how the plane is configured.

Yuneec isn’t stopping there. It plans to equip other ultralight kits with electric motors ranging from 10 to 60 kilowatts. Tian concedes battery technology “is not there yet” because range remains an issue, but he’s optimistic his planes and electric drivetrains will find a market.

“Pilots will fly electric, someday,” he says.

Photo of the E430 at AirVenture: Jason Paur / Wired.com. Video: Yuneec International