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Red Bull Flugtag challenges teams of everyday people to build homemade, human-powered
flying machines and pilot them off a 30-foot high deck in hopes of achieving flight!
Flugtag may mean "flying day" in German, but all these crafts ultimately splash
into the waters below. They are judged not only on their flight's distance, but
creativity and showmanship as well.
Leonardo da Vinci makes the first real studies of flight accumulating over 100 drawings
that illustrated his theories of flight.
Notable Craft: The Ornithopter
George Caley, in his work to discover a way for man to take to the air, designs
many different gliders.
Notable Achievement: Shaping Wings to Allow Air Correct Air Flow
German Engineer Otto Lilienthal continues to evolve glider theories. He was the
first person to design a glider that could fly a person for long distances. His
book on aerodynamics that was published in 1889 was the text used by the Wright
Brothers as the basis for their flying machines.
Achievement: Surviving more than 2500 flights before succumbing
to gravity.
After spending many years learning about the early discoveries in flight, the Wright
Brothers regularly took to the air in gliders, much like Cayley. Their work with
gliders focused on control for their powered experiments.
Notable Achievement: First heavier-than-air flight of 120 feet
at Kitty Hawk.
Will flight history be made this year? Find out as teams compete at the 2008 Red
Bull Flugtag events in Tampa Bay, Portland, OR and Chicago.
The first Red Bull Flugtag took place in Vienna, Austria, in 1991. Since then, more
than 35 Flugtags have been held around the world -- from Ireland to San Francisco
-- attracting up to 300,000 spectators. The record for the farthest flight-to-date
currently stands at 195 feet set in 2000 at Flugtag Austria. The U.S. record stands
at 155 feet set in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2007.