Redbull Flugtag Takes Over The City!
Posted Jul 27, 2013 09:22:58 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It was a competition Wilbur and Orville Wright would have been proud of.
The National Redbull Flugtag Competition soared in to the Museum of Civilization Saturday, seeing 30 teams compete to successfully fly their own homemade contraptions.
Machines were made out of everything from plywood and Styrofoam, plastic wrap to wire and of course, the almighty duct tape.
One person per team had to pilot their contraption off of a 22-foot platform, and teams were judged on their distance, showmanship and creativity.
One thing no one lacked, was creativity.
The Eh Team immortalized Canadian icons such as Red Green and his nephew Harold, Captain Canuck and Don Cherry.
An A-team inspired van was used as the base for the flying machine. It was made out of mostly plywood and duct tape.
The team resides in Windsor, and won the Redbull Soapbox Race in Cincinnati in 2008 as the only Canadian team.
“This is our first flugtag, we’ve had two races state side but we thought we tried flugtag,” Captain Canuck, better known as Greg Martin said.
Flugtag is German for ‘flying day.’
Other Notable teams included the Angry Birds, Das Bull, E.T. Float Home, The Screaming Eagles, Super Mario Brothers and the Gods of Rock.
James is a member of team Das Bull and a first time flyer, he said you have to be a little bit out of your mind to do something like this.
We are most definitely crazy but we are also industrial designers, so we have a little bit of history with designing and building things so its going to help us fly far,” James said before the competition.
The free event brought thousands to the shore of the Ottawa River and Jacques Cartier Park.
Team Sally’s Leap of Faith from Montreal took home the top prize of $7,500, while Ottawa’s This is Banana’s took home second place. Bernache Da Goose, a team from the Museum of Civilization rounded out the top 3.
Those two teams went home with $3000 and $1500 respectively.
It’s the third time the event has been in Canada since inception in Austria in 1992, and the second time in Ottawa-Gatineau. The first was in 2008. Over 100 have been held around the world.
