With the Red Bull Flugtag event coming to town at Sankey Tank, the participating teams are racing to complete their models in record time. The first-of-its-kind event to be held in the country right here in Bangalore, Flugtag is one of the world’s wildest homemade, human-powered flying craft competition.
Come September 28 and a total of 40 teams, who have been selected for the India event will take off from a 22-foot high flight deck in Sankey Tank, in the hope of soaring the farthest distance with only water to catch their inevitable fall. Each team, comprising four members will design, build and launch their Flugtag craft in the hope of defying gravity and staying in the air the farthest distance.
Among the 40 teams selected for this adventure, MetroPlus catches up with two teams and finds out how much progress they have made so far.
Sunny Rai from Bengaluru Dream Flyers says they have already started work on their craft. “Working in twos, we are building the base and the roof, which will act as the wings. The design is a combination of two gears and a spanner. That’s what makes our model stand out from the rest of the other designs. We will use manpower to rotate the gears and are working on getting the aerodynamics right.”
The team, comprising final year mechanical engineering students from Acharya Institute of Technology, proudly says no one has designed a model like this since it is neither a rocket nor a glider. “We have given more importance to the design,” adds Sunny. On what inspired them to take this initiative, he says: “Being final year students, we needed some hands-on experience and we felt this is a great opportunity to showcase our engineering skills.” On the event being held in Bangalore, Sunny believes it’s a great platform for enterprising students to display their talents.
Team Flintstones, on the other hand is taking part in the event mainly for its fun aspect. Akshay Maniraj from the team says: “We were watching all the old Flugtag videos on YouTube when we first heard of the event and we saw that it was a lot of fun. That’s what inspired us to take it up.” On their model, he says: “In the videos we saw, there were cars which had a separate flying apparatus. So we picked up one of our favourite cartoon characters – The Flintstones, who are a Stone Age family with a contemporary lifestyle. As the base of our model, we have the Flintstones car and on top we have the Pterodactyl which is the flying part.”
Studying engineering in M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Akshay says they are all from the same class.
“We made a couple of teams and sent in all our drawings for the event but only ours got selected so our friends are helping us too.” He adds that Bangalore is always known to be chilled and laid back. “So it is no surprise that the city was chosen for this event.”
Participating teams don’t have to be experts in aeronautics, as Flugtag crafts are judged on three parameters: flight distance, creativity of the build and showmanship. There will be free entry for spectators. Watch the official Flugtag music video and more updates on >www.redbull.in .
