Amazing Ayu Builds Real Green Goblin Glider and Flies Over Mountains and Rivers

Song Xingyu grew up in a rural village in Badong County, part of Enshi in China’s Hubei province, where he left school at fourteen to work in his father’s timber mill. Days spent covered in sawdust left little room for formal training, yet an old tablet computer from a friend showed him foreign flight-test programs that fixed the idea of flight in his mind. He started building model aircraft from leftover foam board and scrap parts, posting the work online under the name Amazing Ayu until the channel grew past three million followers.

In 2022, he went out and purchased supplies to convert his father’s old carpentry shed into a workshop. He posted a banner that stated “Ayu’s Scientific Adventure” and recorded the entire procedure as if it were a home improvement program. His previous projects had been pretty impressive, including a remote-control plane he launched off helium balloons to reach 40,000 meters high, a crazy attempt at a jet-powered jump from a helicopter at 5,000 meters that went sideways when his main parachute blew out at 600 meters and his reserve finally kicked in, and even managing to lift a whole furnished room up into the air with a hot air balloon so he could cook breakfast from 10,000 feet.

Growing up watching Spider-Man films gave him a strong desire to create one of the Green Goblin’s flying gliders, so he set about doing so over the course of two months, utilizing five small turbojet engines. The initial test did not go so well, as the engines caught fire, melting the fuel lines and frying the wiring. He sent the data into an AI diagnostic tool, which told him what had gone wrong: the engines were too close together, causing the hot exhaust to bounce off the ground and be sucked right back into the engines, which wasn’t ideal. The tool also suggested that he convert to electric power to avoid a repetition.

The board he designed for the latest version has ten brushless motors, each of which produces over 30 kgs of push, for a total of over 300 kgs of thrust, more than enough to lift four persons and with a 3:1 thrust to weight ratio for a 70 kg pilot. With a peak current of 2000 amps, the batteries and motors are standard off-the-shelf components, while the frame and mounts were developed by Song and cut and printed by a local business that can turn out a finished product quickly. Foot bindings keep the rider steady, while a ring-mounted throttle and a backup handheld remote control allow you to power and maneuver.

The rider has to maintain his or her balance, which is essential for flying on the board. Song keeps the board level manually, relying solely on his body position, visual signals he picks up along the route, and his inner ear to inform him what’s going on, much like a skateboarder who keeps his cool to stay upright. He has two phones set up as a monitoring system: one records the board’s tilt, while the other is connected to his wrist. He receives voice cues in his headphones asking him to shift his weight to the left or bend his knee slightly that way.

After more than ten days of practice, he took the board out and flew on the National Day holiday in October. On the 6th, his team was able to arrange a flight in the gorgeous location of Barenhe that was over 300 meters long and took just over 2 minutes to complete, taking off from the ground near a visitor center and landing on a platform smack bang in the middle of the canyon. Other runs included crossing the Yangtze River, flying over mountain ranges, and even soaring above Badong’s downtown streets before safely landing.

He had given the local authorities plenty advance warning before its maiden journey. When the board is fully charged, the battery only lasts around 16 minutes before becoming flaky due to heat buildup. Furthermore, public flights have been limited to less than 40% throttle. Work on the board is still ongoing, with the goal of enabling it to fly higher and with more control, all done in the same old shed, and it appears that the local authorities have been discussing setting up a larger testing area close where he lives.