Aug
04
posted at: 7:59 PM
This past Saturday we went to Portland Flugtag 2008! Supposedly this year's event, which reeked overbearingly of the Red Bull marketing machine, as well as the beer spilled by the lego guys, had over 80,000 attendees, which is a tall order for the Portland Waterfront to support. While that number seems a little high, it certainly felt like that many people while I was there.
Flooginating the countryside
Flugtag is an aviation competition organized by Red Bull every year in a few select cities. This was the second time the event had been held in Portland, and none of the participants failed to disappoint. Even when they failed dramatically in their flying attempts.
Partipants compete for a Grand Prize (I never quite caught what they won) by creating a purely human-powered aircraft to launch off the side of a crudely constructed Red Bull aircraft carrier. They are judged on categories of creativity, showmanship (they each do a little jig before the big takeoff), and overall distance that the pilot achieves before hitting the water.
Crash and burntag
As you can imagine, some aircraft were more aerodynamic than others, which proved to be quite entertaining as each craft achieved certain demise as it hit the water. Many of the craft appeared to be configured to basically be hang gliders cleverly hidden within a more creatively disguised vessel. Some of these types of attempts were more successful than others.
Overall, it was a great event considering it was free, but there was just way too many people. Erika and I arrived around 10:45AM to get good seats (the event started at 1pm), and despite having a good view, we realized it was significantly less-fun as a result of the waves of people we had to navigate through just to go grab a beer. Maybe next time we'll get lucky and Red Bull won't advertise it as much.
For the record, my favorite team was the Spaceballs team. It's too bad they were flying a Winnebago and it barely even made it off of the platform, because otherwise they would have won.