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STUNNING PICS: Romanian teen's jet-propelled bicycle

Raul Oaida from Bucharest, Romania used his pocket money to build the first-of-its-kind engine in three years.

All of 19, Romanian national Raul Oaida built a jet engine in the yard of his house in Deva, 399 km (245 miles) of capital Bucharest.

What you are seeing is a jet-engine propelled bicycle invented by a Romanian teenager Raul Oaida.

Using little else besides his pocket money and sponsorship from various sources, Oaida made the engine in about three years.

STUNNING PICS: Romanian teen's jet-propelled bicycle

The unique jet-powered cycle clocked a speed of up to 42 kph with the jet bicycle during a test ride recently.

According to reports, the cycle should fetch a little over $ 20,000 should it be sold in the market. However he only uses his invention for demonstrations.

STUNNING PICS: Romanian teen's jet-propelled bicycle

Ever the inventor, Oaida built a steam engine when he was 15 that won him an award in a school competition, foxcrawl.com writes. Following the success, he decided to take a step further and invent a jet-engine propelled bicycle.

STUNNING PICS: Romanian teen's jet-propelled bicycle

The bicycle in the picture is a result of three years of hard work. Oaida designed all the components of the engine himself teaching himself using books and the Internet.

Besides putting away his pocket money, he also received help from people who discovered his project on the Internet.

The first sponsorship however came from ARCA (Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association), a non-profit organisation that runs the Romanian Space Programme.

STUNNING PICS: Romanian teen's jet-propelled bicycle

The jet engine operates on a mixture of petrol, diesel and synthetic oil and consumes a litre of the fuel per minute.

Made of duralumin, stainless steel, titanium and some alloys, the engine weighs 5kg and is operated by a computer.

"If you try to manually start a jet engine, you can destroy it. A computer does what a human operator could never do," the inventor was quoted as saying on foxcrawl.com.

STUNNING PICS: Romanian teen's jet-propelled bicycle

With this invention, Raul Oaida has become the first Romanian to build a jet engine in the country after his compatriot Henri Coanda developed a jet engine for an airplane in 1910 in France, which is said to be the first ever jet engine.

 

STUNNING PICS: Romanian teen's jet-propelled bicycle

Reaching a top speed of up to 42kph, Oaida's cycle may perhaps be a great way to beat rush hour traffic but it may not be the most economical.

Foxcrawl quoted Oaida telling the local newspaper Hunedoreanul that the fuel was '4 parts diesel, one part gasoline (benzine) and 2 per cent synthetic oil'.

"That's equivalent to kerosene which is difficult to find, and in case you are lucky enough, then you have to buy large quantities. At maximum speed  -- ie 93,000 rev/min (RPM), the engine consumes one litre per minute," he said.

STUNNING PICS: Romanian teen's jet-propelled bicycle

Romanian website nou.zhd.ro quoted Oaida as saying that none of his former professors were confident that he would build this engine. Parents, he said, didn't understand what was on his mind. "I wanted to prove that my ideas were not (fanciful). After three years of work, I was able to show how the first jet engine designed by a Romanian in the last hundred years," he told the website.