Red Bull Flugtag is back!

The world’s most famous flying machine competition, Red Bull Flugtag, returns to South Africa after a ten-year hiatus and makes its way to Cape Town’s V& A Waterfront on the 9^th of December 2012. 

Teams are challenged to build homemade, human-powered flying machines and pilot them off a six metre-high ramp in the hopes of achieving flight. Flugtag may mean “flight day” in German, but all these crafts ultimately splash into the waters below. They are judged not only on their flight’s distance, but creativity as well.

Red Bull Flugtag is a firm favourite internationally with over 100 versions of the event having taken place since the first in Austria in 1992. Spectators are treated to the pilots and crews hilarious pre-flight antics, elaborate flying machines, cringe-worthy attempts at the longest flight record and subsequent plummets into the wavy waters below.   

The event was last staged in South Africa ten years ago in Benoni in 2002 where 55,000 spectators flocked to Homestead Lake to see 40 crews pull out all the stops to take top honours on the day. This year 50 crews, from various backgrounds and regions, will be chosen from the application process to take part in the event. The Red Bull Flugtag festivities will happen right in front of the V & A Waterfront’s Jetty 1 – a location chosen as it lends itself to great viewing for spectators with the striking backdrop of Cape Town’s famous Table Mountain.

We know VISI readers are more lateral-minded than most, and many of you have at least dabbled in design in some form or another (not that any proven design or engineering ability is a prerequisite to enter – originality and personality are the most important criteria for selection). So why not put some of that pent-up that creativity to the test, and wrangle up a team to brave the prospect of a vertical plunge in a homemade flying machine? Gravity is just a theory after all.

Eager flying fundi’s are encouraged to channel their inner Amelia Earhart or Wright Brother and glide over to www.redbullflugtag.co.za for more information on how to enter.

 Follow Red Bull Flugtag on Twitter: @RedBullZA (#RedBullFlugtag)