After six tries, Liu Yibing successfully built his own plane and turned his hobby into a career

Liu Yibing was a teenager when he made his first plane from bed sheets and the engine of a pesticide sprayer in 1990.

The determined youngster from Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, fashioned the 5-meter body from steel tubing he bought from a construction materials market and sourced the wheels from a cart.

The bed sheets covered the 11-meter wing span. With its weight of 100 kilograms and paltry 5-horsepower engine it was inevitable the plane would never fly.

"Making a plane was far more difficult than I had thought," said Liu, 47, who today makes a living from flying and training pilots.

"I gradually realized that I should have taken many things into consideration like engine power, air resistance and the aircraft's weight and design," Liu said.

But Liu, who had dreamed of flying his own plane since he was a boy, refused to be deterred by his first failure.

Over the next five years, Liu spent about 10,000 yuan ($1,400) on his hobby and made four more planes that failed.

Reach for the sky

The support from his family and the local community was mixed.

Liu's father passed away in 1982. His stepfather was a village doctor and wanted him to follow in his footsteps. But at the age of 18, Liu found himself sitting at a desk unable to absorb the content of the medical textbooks. He persuaded his stepfather to support his hobby.

Liu's mother, a farmer, was far more understanding. She sold an apartment for 200,000 yuan in 2009 and gave all the money to him to buy the materials to build a plane.

"My mother supported me because I had no job and she feared that I would join some bad group. Making planes let me concentrate on a hobby that was less disagreeable to her," he said.

Villagers' negativity about Liu's sky-high ambition motivated him to succeed. Some said he was a daydreamer and if he managed to build a plane all the college students and teachers should quit their positions and give their places to him.

Barely anyone believed a farmer's son could fly a plane, let alone one he built himself. He would prove them all wrong.

Winging it

In 1995, Liu changed strategy and tried to fly a glider from the top of a small mountain. After being airborne for 30 meters, the glider fell into a shallow pool. Liu injured his knee.

"During that test, I was so nervous that I couldn't control it and fell down," Liu said. "And I was really upset that I had been failing for five years. I had no confidence to persist anymore.

"However, my stepfather behaved like nothing had happened. He took a look around the damaged plane and told me to continue flying after I recovered. I dared not say anything. After all, I had promised him I wouldn't give up halfway."

The same year he managed to buy a 30-horsepower engine from a retired engineer of a shipbuilding company based in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.

He used it to power his sixth plane and made the body from a lighter aluminum alloy instead of steel.

In 1996, he finally succeeded. His sixth plane left the ground of a newly built highway near his home, traveling at a height of about 3 meters for 100 meters.

"Even if it just flew for a short distance I felt extremely excited because a plane made by me could fly. But its lift was still not enough, so I painted the nylon wing skin to make it airtight," he said.

Higher and higher

Liu kept studying plane construction, mainly by reading books on aircraft design.

"I read a book about ultralight aircraft design and wrote a letter to the author, Hu Jizhong, an aeronautics professor at Beihang University. I took a train to visit him in Beijing in 1997 and he gave me a lot of tips, such as the center of gravity of an aircraft," he said.

In October of the same year, Liu converted his one-seat aircraft into a two-seater and took each of his parents for a flight.

In 2001, Liu obtained his license for powered paragliding which utilizes a giant fan-like motor to generate thrust and lift for the pilot. Two years later, he earned a delta-wing aircraft pilot's license.

After gaining enough air hours, he was able to start earning money from his plane. In 2003, he used his deltawing aircraft to take aerial videos for a local television station and earned 6,000 yuan in one week. He also performed in air shows to make money.

In 2009, he won a gold medal at a national ultralight aircraft championship and became a member of the Aero Sports Federation of China.

Since 2010, he has leased 12.4 hectares of land in Helan county, Ningxia and set up his own aero sports club. In 2016, he was licensed as a pilot instructor.

In the future, he plans to improve his club's facilities and educate youngsters about aerospace.

"Many children are interested in aerospace and would like to experience flying or even making planes," he said. "I will build a museum of flight and let more people know about the skies."