Flugtag: Fearsome flying

It's not flying. It's falling with style.

Red Bull Flugtag, an amateur event pitting 37 teams against gravity and sanity, is coming to the Twin Cities for the first time Saturday.

For the flugtag, German for "flying day," teams build homemade flying machines, then launch them off a 30-foot platform and into a watery landing. Each craft must weigh less than 450 pounds (pilot included), have a wingspan of no more than 30 feet and hold no form of stored energy. That leaves four team members to push their flying machine, pilot and all, off the platform at top speed and hope for the best. Only a few of the teams will have much success flying, and plenty of them will be wrecked in a split-second plunge into the Mississippi River after months of work.

"It is an event like no other," said Matt Gibson, captain of St. Paul State of Mind. "Just the vibe -- and I know it's a cliché because Red Bull is an energy drink -- but the energy at the event, it's electric."

Gibson and two members of his team have competed in three previous Flugtags elsewhere. Their most successful flight came in Cleveland in 2004, when their craft went 52 feet and finished in fourth place.

The first flight is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at Harriet Island. Flugtags have drawn as many as 80,000 people, although Harriet Island has a capacity of 40,000. The first event was held in Austria in 1991; there have been more than 80 competitions worldwide since then.

Gibson and his friends were drawn to Flugtag because it was such a unique spectacle. Years later, his garage is still home to a homemade flying machine and his summer has been dominated by hundreds of hours of construction.

The craft are judged on flight distance, creativity of design and showmanship. Some designs are built with entertainment as a priority over engineering, with wings added to designs based on everything from Zambonis to cheeseburgers, more out of obligation than aeronautical acumen. Almost none of the entries offer the pilot any semblance of control.

"I'm more of a rider than a pilot," said Joyce Roffler, who will be piloting a giant pickle for Chicks-on-a-Stick. "There's a control bar, but that's really just to hold onto. There's no steering."

Some teams are serious in spite of their names. Team Bacon, a group of five friends from St. Paul, has more than designs on a world record. They also have computer models projecting that their glider -- with wings that look like bacon -- could smash the world record of 195 feet, set in Austria in 2001. The U.S. record is 155 feet, set in Nashville in 2007.

"I will accept nothing less than 200 [feet]," said Joe Ridler, captain and pilot of Team Bacon. "Anything over 250, I'm good with. Anything less than 200, I don't really see as a reality. I think it's going to be bigger than anybody imagined."

Imagining a giant Red Bull can with bacon wings is just the beginning. Even though Gibson & Co. have built three other flying machines for previous Flugtags, describing the event to neighbors who wonder what they're building in their garage never gets easier.

And if Team Bacon has its way, pigs will fly.

Ben Jones • 612-673-4426

TEAM BACON

Members: Joe Ridler (pilot/captain), Josh Ridler (engineer), Matt dePratter (designer), Brit Skolness, Chris Sunde.

From: St. Paul.

Team background: Team Bacon's glider, with a fuselage shaped like a Red Bull can, will be perched atop an 18-foot aluminum tower to give the craft extra room to fly. The wings are specially engineered to harness energy while pulling out of a dive, propelling the craft forward. Computer models give team members hope that they can break the international record. "If this ends up being anything like BASE jumping, which is the scariest thing I've ever done in my life, then it's going to be an adrenaline rush," Joe Ridler said. "Time just slows down, and second by second goes by like minutes. It's quite enjoyable to be completely terrified. Which is probably exactly what I'll be. But I'll be committed. Once it's in motion, we can't stop it."

Members: Injue Cho (captain/engineer), Joyce Roffler (pilot), Niki Larson, Helene Seymour, Breanna Peck.

From: Minneapolis.

Estimated cost: $800-$1,000.

Team background: One of the few all-female teams in the competition, Chicks-on-a-Stick keep things simple by using the lightest building materials they can find. There's no heavy construction going on here; the only power tool the women use is a cordless drill. "Our inspiration was the State Fair and the impaled food found there," Larson said. "We didn't want to just do a basic corn dog, so we came up with a pickle dog on a stick, which is a pickle, pastrami and cream cheese spread together. We thought picking something with a local theme would help getting into the competition, and we also needed to pick something basic we could build without having any real power tools."

From: Shoreview.

Estimated cost: Just over $1,000.

Team background: The core members have competed in three flugtags: Chicago in 2003, Cleveland in 2004 and Baltimore in 2006. When the Twin Cities Flugtag was announced, they decided to build a glider themed on the skyline of St. Paul to honor their city and their story of competing in flugtags around the country. "Version 4.0. We're good to go. Math isn't our strong point, but I think that makes us four times less stupid than the first time we did it," Matt Gibson said. "We're one of 37 teams that was selected out of hundreds. That's a real honor. We take it real serious. We're diehard flugtagers."