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Flugtag Entries Take Energetic Drop Into Drink

Tribune photo by MICHAEL SPOONEYBARGER

Team The Little Engine That Could of Panama City Beach takes flight winning third place with 21 feet during the 2008 Red Bull Flugtag.

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By VALERIE KALFRIN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 19, 2008

Richard Robards of Tallahassee stood outside the Tampa Convention Center on Saturday in a purple shower cap and a white bath towel - and no one batted an eye.

It helped that the 31-year-old mechanical engineer and his buddies were tending to a homemade rubber ducky they hoped could fly.

The giant quacker was one of 35 homemade aircraft that tried to catch air in the Red Bull Flugtag, or "flying day" competition. The makers of the energy drink have sponsored more than 40 Flugtags worldwide since 1991. Saturday's was the first in the United States this year, with two more planned for Portland, Ore., and Chicago.

Competitors traveled from Texas, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Tennessee and other parts of Florida. There were the Flintstones, with a purple pterodactyl that spewed smoke from its nostrils. Tennessee icons Jack Daniels, Elvis Presley and Davy Crockett tried out an orange glider. The Fantastic Four, with a not-so-Invisible Woman and the Silver Surfer, made do with a surfboard on wheels.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Travis Hicks, 21, of Clintwood, Va., who was suited up as Mr. Fantastic with pool noodles as his stretchy arms.

Tampa police estimated 100,000 people packed around the convention center to watch the contraptions of cardboard, PVC pipe, aluminum foil, feathers and duct tape scoot off a 22-foot-tall ramp into the Hillsborough River. The shoreline was jammed with spectators, most jockeying to see the outcome on a giant television screen.

Each team hoped its creation would go up-tiddly-up-up like the crafts in "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines." Most went down-tiddly-down-down with a nosedive or belly flop.

That included the duck, which Robards said was inspired by his 6-year-old daughter. He took the river splash in stride.

"I grew up in St. Louis, Mo., and we've got the muddy Mississippi. This is nothing," Robards said.

A craft fashioned after a Cuban sandwich couldn't cut the mustard. Neither could a group of students from the University of Tampa, who inserted flimsy wings into a minaret while spoofing the Spartans of the movie "300." "This is Tampa!" they yelled.

The Tampa Bay Derby Darlins made a respectable showing with a flying roller skate, taking home a winged trophy as the people's choice.

The top prize - a pilot's training course - went to Team Tampa Baywatch, a group of former lifeguards from Busch Gardens and Adventure Island. They wheeled a boat up the ramp that arched into the water as pilot Keith Humphrey, 38, soared free in a hang glider.

"I almost landed on those boats," said Humphrey, a sales manager for the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. He sailed 109 feet, the greatest distance of the day.

Humphrey said he had never flown a glider before. "I know how to go straight and down, but not to the right or left. The crosswind got me, and I stalled," he said.

Air Gilligan won the second prize of skydiving lessons. The friends from a telecommunications consulting firm imagined what would happen if the castaways from "Gilligan's Island" tried to fly home.

Pilot Josh Anderson, 31, was Gilligan, with married friends posing as the Skipper and Ginger, the movie star. The team also included the Professor and Mary Ann, who sported a black pigtailed wig, a buxom gingham top and a mustache and beard.

"I was the only one who would do it," said Rick Valderrama, 37, who dressed as the country girl.

Snagging third place and paragliding lessons was The Little Engine That Could, a team of Bay County firefighters. They extinguished a "smoking" cardboard house and pretended to do CPR before sailing about 21 feet in their fire engine with wings.

The craft weighed 218 pounds, plus the 150-pound pilot, "which equaled sinking like a rock," firefighter Matt Lopez said.

The river's visibility reminded pilot Dusty Neel, 24, of entering a burning house. "I couldn't see anything," he said.

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800 or vkalfrin@tampatrib.com.

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