Keith Dickson and his fantastic flying machine

Keith Dickson in the cockpit of his home-built, steam-powered helicopter.  PHOTOS: GREGOR RICHARDSON
Keith Dickson in the cockpit of his home-built, steam-powered helicopter. PHOTOS: GREGOR RICHARDSON
At 74, engineer and international figure-skater Keith Dickson has built a helicopter fuelled by hydrogen-peroxide. Unconstrained by convention, Dickson gives Bruce Munro his take on the future of transport and Dunedin’s place in it.

Every glance through the cobweb-framed gazebo windows to the sunshine-baked front yard of Keith Dickson’s hill-suburb villa delivers a thrill of wonderment.

Nearest the house stands a mini, single-rotor-blade helicopter, drawn by Dickson when he was about 6 years old and brought to life in all its spoof, steampunk glory almost seven decades later. Beyond that is a real one-man helicopter complete with rotor-blade-tip rockets powered by Nasa rocket fuel, hydrogen peroxide. On the far side of both is what looks like a super-sized trampoline but is in fact Dickson’s homemade, plastic-coated, figure-skating rink, now in a slight state of disrepair.

Shielding this fantastic scene from the public gaze on two sides is a tall hedge. One half is lean and straight, trimmed by the first hulking manifestation of a Dickson-designed hedge-cutting robot. The other half awaits attention from a smarter, scaled-down version of his gardening automaton.

Here inside the tin gazebo redolent of 1001 Arabian Nights, sitting on cushioned sheepskins and attended by web-veiled spiders, Dickson is telling tales and conjuring futuristic visions every bit as fascinating as the outdoors scene.

"Ninety percent of my work was for insurance companies - ships, cars, all sorts of motor vehicles," Dickson says of his engineering career, intensity conveyed more by the fixed gaze of blue eyes than tone of voice.

"I did quite a few ships. I once saved the bacon of a 27,000-tonne log carrier in Nelson."

While not far off the coast, the housing for the vessel’s rudder mechanism had broken, forcing the crew to nurse the log carrier to the safety of the nearest port.

The prototype of Keith Dickson’s robot hedge cutter is operational. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
The prototype of Keith Dickson’s robot hedge cutter is operational. PHOTO: SUPPLIED
Several experts, including someone from Germany, were called in to advise a fix, but without success.

Eventually, someone mentioned Dickson’s name and he was given an urgent phone call.

He answered the call, flew to Nelson and fixed the break.

"It was a funny thing, because I often wear kilts and skirts," Dickson says.

"I really like skirts for a variety of reasons, including that they’re more comfortable.

"Anyway, I was in Invercargill when I got the call. And I was wearing a short black denim skirt, three inches above the knee.

"I ended up wearing that all the way to Nelson. When they met me at the airport they didn’t think I was for real," he concludes with a hearty laugh.

Anyone who knows him, however, would not have been the least surprised - by his attire nor his acumen.

Dickson comes from stock with deep colonial Otago roots. His maternal uncle was Esmond de Beer, grandson of the founder of Hallensteins, nephew of avid collector Willi Fels and, along with his sisters, significant benefactor of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and other city cultural institutions.

Born and raised in Dunedin, Dickson has lived in the same wooden Kenmure villa for 45 years, only a couple of minutes’ drive from where he grew up in Mornington. He may keep his base local, but over the years he has lived in several locations worldwide and has visited many more.

Trained as a fitter and turner, he says his real education began after he went overseas and worked for engineering firms in Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Keith Dickson’s home-built Bugatti Type 35. PHOTO: GREGOR RICHARDSON
Keith Dickson’s home-built Bugatti Type 35. PHOTO: GREGOR RICHARDSON
Returning to New Zealand in the mid-1970s, Dickson developed a unique application for an existing product.

"That’s been my biggest success - the engineering, which I made my money from. Rebuilding crankshafts and componentry on engines - keyways, splines, threads and cracks in engine blocks - with this unusual way of using a high-tech ceramic."

He was in high demand.

"I used to fly out of here every morning on the seven o’clock flight and go somewhere. It could be anywhere in New Zealand."

Clients were grateful. More than once he received double the agreed fee. For years after one particular job, a company sent him an expensive bottle of bubbly every Christmas.

"They only wanted a temporary repair, but it was still going seven years later."

At the start of the new millennium, Dickson capped off his education with a business degree from the University of Otago.

In some ways it was a surprising achievement, given that formal schooling was never his forte.

"School was always a struggle. Because I always saw everything in a different light. I got myself into trouble so often."

Not that he was not bright, and capable.

What he did excel at, from about the age of 10, was making fireworks.

They were solid fuel rockets, Dickson says. By which he means, he and his brother produced their own gunpowder for their own Guy Fawkes incendiaries.

"We made fireworks for years and years. They were quite big rockets too."

Inventor is a label Dickson does not identify with. He prefers the term visionary. But visionary-inventor might be closest to the mark, because he feels a compulsion to manifest his ideas in solid form; most often in metal, with a mechanical heart.

He has built several motorised, half- and third-scale, models of de Beer family vintage cars. There was the mini submersible he designed, built and tested in Moana Pool - a ride-on underwater motorbike - which he later deconstructed and rebuilt as a Star Wars R2D2 robot. There are the tin gazebos. Seven were built and six sold ... Right now, it is the hedge-cutting robot that has his attention.

"I stayed with a friend in Basel, Switzerland, who has a robot lawn mower that was made in Sweden. It comes out of its shed two or three times a week, mows the lawn and returns itself to its shed to recharge.

"I wanted a robot that could cut my hedge, but it doesn’t exist. So, I’m building one."

That might not be the thought process of many, but Dickson is unperturbed.

"I shun convention. If I bought a Ferrari, the first thing I’d do is snap the rear vision mirror off. Because when I’ve passed something it is history ... I’m only interested in where I’m going next."

The normal way of doing things has no hold on him. What he considers common sense is his guiding light.

It shapes his life as much as it shapes his creations.

At 22, when Japan was still an exotic, little-visited destination, Dickson went there on a one year scholarship to learn karate. He ended up staying five years.

At 50, Dickson took up figure-skating. Shelves in one corner of his lounge bear cups and medals won in age-group competitions in Germany, France, Russia, Australia, Japan, Slovenia and Italy.

After a figure-skating routine in Milan, Italy, he was in the changing room getting out of his costume and back into his street clothes - a khaki green balloon skirt, big red boots and a red sleeveless top - when Dickson says he became aware of a man staring at him.

That man, he later found out, was a senior designer for a world-leading fashion label.

"About six months later, down the runway came the same whole outfit.

"But I have no rights over it because originally the idea came from an op-shop. I bought a $5 op-shop skirt and got it changed a little bit."

Unconstrained by convention, guided by common sense, a visionary who likes nothing more than to bring his visions to life. A hydrogen peroxide-fuelled helicopter is perhaps the inevitable outcome.

"I do my work to create something better than we have now, to help the planet and because it’s interesting. It’s all of the above."

He started working on the helicopter a decade ago, but is only now talking publicly about the project.

Just wide enough for the pilot’s seat, no longer than an average car, a pick-and-mix of helicopter and other parts, equipped with all the instruments needed to get certification and weighing a mere 176kg, Dickson’s rocket-powered helicopter is unparalleled.

To propel the aircraft, pressurised fuel tanks release hydrogen peroxide through fuel lines to a gland at the base of the rotor and then along the rotor blades to rocket motors on both tips. There the fuel passes through holes in discs of pure silver, triggering a chemical reaction.

Dickson chose hydrogen-peroxide because of its high energy rating. Gasoline for cars has a British thermal unit (BTU) rating of about 150 BTU/pound. Hydrogen is roughly the same. Hydrogen peroxide is rated 542 BTU/pound.

"Hydrogen peroxide is H2O2 - two molecules of hydrogen and two of oxygen," Dickson explains.

"When it reacts with the silver catalyst it loses an oxygen molecule and converts to H2O, which is water. The reaction instantly superheats the water to 730degC, expanding one-over-5000 in volume as steam, which is what powers the rockets."

Keith Dickson with one of the skirts an Italian fashion designer was so interested in. PHOTO:...
Keith Dickson with one of the skirts an Italian fashion designer was so interested in. PHOTO: BRUCE MUNRO
It is a steam-powered helicopter.

"I’ve always been in favour of alternative fuels. Hydrogen peroxide is a really clean fuel because it only produces condensate, steam."

It is not a new idea. World War 2 torpedoes were powered by hydrogen peroxide, as are Nasa rockets.

But in today’s world it is a problematic idea. To give the helicopter lift, the fuel needs to be 70% hydrogen peroxide. For the past decade, following terror attempts to blow holes in planes using H2O2, hydrogen peroxide of that strength has been almost impossible to purchase legally.

The helicopter, while it will not fly, is a 3-D embodiment of Dickson’s enduring interest in how visionary design and practical engineering can provide solutions and improve lives.

It is an approach he would like to see a lot more of if we are serious about addressing environmental issues and creating a sustainable world.

"The long-term future of the planet: I think Covid is the Morris Minor; I think there’s a Mack truck just around the corner.

"We’ve got eight billion people on the planet, using all the resources, polluting rivers and forests, killing all the animals."

We have to get rid of cars, Dickson says adamantly.

"We’re not going to have cars. And if we do have cars, my vision is that we have a small car and when we take longer trips we do those on a train that also takes our small car .

"You’ll get to Christchurch and then drive off the train in your small car.

"Mass transit is going to have to come back. The whole planet is on the wrong trip with cars."

Dickson’s mouth and money are in sync. He has ordered an Aptera - a two seat, three-wheel, solar and mains-charged electric vehicle that can travel 1600km on a single charge.

"It’s got a coefficient of friction of 0.007%, can go from zero to 100kmh in 3.5 seconds and has a top speed of 177kmh."

The US-built Aptera costs NZ$54,000. Dickson has gone for the option that can convert the large hatch boot into a two-person tent.

The future of flying, he says, will be large planes fuelled by hydrogen and smaller, electric aircraft for intercity travel.

"A flying car is not an option because you need two different motors or a shitload of gearing to convert horsepower on the road to horsepower in the air.

"There’s too much engineering, it’s too clumsy and it’s too heavy."

He thinks Dunedin needs to get with the future-oriented programme.

He points to Dunedin of the 1920s that staged a world fair, the South Seas Exhibition, had Plunket’s world-leading child healthcare system, boasted the best train engines in the world, built at the city’s Hillside Workshop, and "a whole raft of other ideas and good stuff going down that we were the leaders of".

"I think the DNA is still here to do that. I think we should be reinvigorating that."

He would love to see electric aeroplane or electric car manufacturing in Dunedin.

"If we could get some sort of industry going like that - small, 3-D-printed, using robots, a whole different way of engineering. It’s not going to be huge factories with big smoke stacks. That’s gone. It’s got to be small, efficient, personally made.

"This is the future. People talk about getting whatever new car they see. That’s yesterday. We shouldn’t be living in yesterday. We need to be living in the future."

bruce.munro@odt.co.nz

Add a Comment