One Way or Another, Gliders Will Make a Splash
Posted on: Thursday, 17 July 2008, 12:00 CDT
If the glider they're making actually stays aloft, even for a moment, the team of aspiring rocket scientists from the University of Central Florida will be happy.
But a spectacular belly flop into Tampa's Hillsborough River would be a thrill, too -- if video of the plunge makes a splash on YouTube.
The real prize at Saturday's Red Bull Flugtag is Internet fame, not cutting-edge aerodynamics.
Thirty-six teams, including two from the Orlando area, will line up to push their homemade creations off a 30-foot-tall deck overhanging the river.
From there, it's sink or -- less likely -- soar.
Creativity and showmanship count as much as flight distance in the 17-year-old Flugtag (pronounced floog-tag), German for "flying day." That's why video clips of the most bizarre entries -- flying machines shaped like a pig, a banjo, the space shuttle -- often make it into TV commercials for the popular energy drink and get thousands of hits on video-sharing sites.
Let's meet the teams:
*The Wrong Brothers are drawing on team members' high-level engineering skills to build a functional aircraft in the shape of a flying fish.
"None of us have built a glider before, but we're looking at freshman-level aerodynamics here," said Jason Dunn, 23, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering and team captain who dreams of working in the space industry. "It should work."
Keegan Ford, 23, is a UCF alumnus working as a propulsion-system engineer for the space shuttle.
"It's going to be a blast when we run off the deck," Ford said.
Before starting to build the glider in borrowed space at the turbine lab on the UCF campus, the team researched glider design and studied old Flugtag videos.
The result: a tangle of plastic pipe, nylon fabric and duct tape. Team members will dress as sea creatures such as crabs and starfish for a brief skit before the plunge.
"We obsess over every little thing," Ford said. "We come here straight from work and stay until we can't stay awake anymore."
The project will likely wind up costing about $1,000 in materials and transportation costs, Dunn said. The all-boy team's girlfriends are stepping up to help with choreography.
"So whether we do well or fail miserably, we'll have had fun," Dunn said. "It'll probably be more exciting if we flop."
*In contrast to the Wrong Brothers' careful planning, the Flight Jrunkies are winging it.
"We never intended for our aircraft to fly," said David Echeverry, 24, captain of the Flight Jrunkies. "We plan to fall with style."
The Jrunkies are a fusion of (adrenaline) junkies and (beer) drinkers, Echeverry said. Members live in Orlando and Ocoee and know each other from working together as flight instructors and, in the case of Echeverry and Eric Pellegrino, 25, their military service in Afghanistan.
Echeverry's team is building an airplane full of sky jumpers that will run into "mechanical problems" on the runway. It's made of cardboard and plastic pipe held together by screws, zip ties and, of course, duct tape. Cost so far: about $200. They're still noodling over what costumes to wear for their -- possibly watery -- finale.
Flight Jrunkies team members initially tried to make all the cuts and finishes on their aircraft perfect, said Kevin Johnson, 22, who volunteered his Ocoee garage as a hangar.
That was slowing things down until Echeverry provided some perspective: "Dude, this thing is going off a pier. It just needs to last until it goes over."
Oh, the humanity.
Source: The Orlando Sentinel
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