Red Bull Flug Tug

Update: Since posting this blog entry I have been informed that the event is actually called Flug Tag, not Flug Tug. Anyway, I found some much better videos on youtube of the action. I'll put them up at the end of the post. I might just recommend starting with them.

On Saturday Grace and I, plus one of our friends, went to see the "Red Bull Flug Tug" in Hyde Park. The "Flug Tug" is basically this silly competition where teams of people - usually men - build enormous gliders and then run them off a ramp into the Serpentine (the man-made lake in the middle of Hyde Park). It's a competition and people are judged on three criteria: creativity, performance and distance.

You can get a maximum of 20 points for creativity. The gliders are not usually built by people who know anything about aeronautics. They're usually more like parade floats that are pushed off a 20 foot ramp, where they fall straight down into the water and break spectacularly apart. The performance is also out of 20 points, and is based on a 30 second performance which the team does before they push their craft into the water. You get 2 points for every meter you glide through the air, for a maximum of 30 points.

Unfortunately, we showed up a bit late (it was free) and there were no more primo seats on the water. Like the majority of the 80,000 people who attended we had to watch the event on giant TV screens. Still, it was a good crowd, and a good excuse to drink some beer, sit in the sun and eat freshly fried donuts (I love freshly fried donuts).

Anyway, I took some videos, because you really have to see it to believe it. Unfortunately, these videos are pretty terrible. When you take a video of a TV screen, it shows up very badly, as you will see. Beware of flashing lights.

ANYWAY, without further ado, here is a typical entry. This one is Star Wars themed.



And here, if you can stand more flashing TV screens, is a wildly successful glider built by real engineers.



Other highlights:

-A very good looking plane built by engineers that snapped apart in mid-air from the weight of the pilot.
-A disco themed team whose glider was literally a giant discoball with some angel wings attached to either side. That went absolutely straight down.
-There was also a team whose 'glider' was literally just a fully loaded fruit stand.

Some Better Videos:

A Nun-themed team (The Bad Habits)


A Better Video of the Star-Wars Team (The Wrong Brothers)


Don't worry, this guy from the Evel Knieval themed team was alright.


And, one more time, the successful glider.