On Saturday Eileen and I went to Flugtag Vancouver downtown at Science World. It was a hot, sunny day here so we didn’t stay more than a couple hours but it was a lot of fun. There were thirty one teams competing, we saw about half of them throw themselves into the water. I’ve heard of this event being held in many places in Europe but apparently its been held in North America too. This was the first time it was held in Canada though and teams came from as far away as Quebec to compete.

If you’ve never heard of Flugtag before, go check out the site linked above to get some background. On the lower-right side of the page there is a small movie showing how the flying is done. Teams also get points for their costumes and for a little skit (usually dancing) before the big launch. The whole thing is a real laugh.

The event was sponsered by Red Bull (that energy drink thing) and started with four parachuters dropping in from about 5,000 feet with smoke packs on their feet. They did some wild acrobatics on the way down, smoke trails intertwined as they performed a sort of ariel ballet. Their landing zone was the same launch platform as the other flying machines would later fly (sort of) and drop from. Three of the four guys hit their mark, while one guy splashed down. It was a great start to kick off the event! I was really amazed how fast these guys come down.

None of the machines we saw went much further than 10 feet. The world record for such Flugtag human powered machines is 170 feet. Clearly some people brought along real hang gliders and such with the hope of flying high, but without fail they all went into the drink the same way. I suspect a traditional glider just won’t generate enough lift in their short freefall. We later heard one team made it 80 feet or so, it must have been quite something to see.

I’ll have to see if I can find a team to join next year. It looks like a lot of fun to build and launch one of these contraptions, even if it means you end up jumping twenty feet into the water at the end of it.

I’ve uploaded some pictures from the day here.