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Flugtag, Human Powered Flying Machine Competition
Mike Lohse writes "Redbull is promoting its human-powered flying competition called Flugtag in San Francisco. Looks like creativity wins. The rules? Less than 30 feet wide, less than 450 lbs., only human power for propulsion. Applications are due August 20th, applicants are selected August 27th, and the competition is October 26th in San Francisco. Get sketching..."
I thought it was *Redbull* that gave you wings!
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jonathan barket
Does spending a week winding up a huge rubber band count?
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
If there are bonus points for going under weight, I would just run naked and flap my arms. Might lose points for "Lack" or flight, but bonus points for wieght...no? ok then
"CPU's Don't make mistakes....They just miss a few cycles sometimes..."
"You'll laugh, you'll fly... just not very far."
:)
I guess if you're going to fall to a horrible bloody death, it pays to have a sense of humor about it.
too funny - check out the videos of previous Flugtag's on the linked website.
My fave is the Red Baron mock-up that flew, oh about.... 4 feet (1.26m for you Euros)
10 MD
How slowly or quickly the device moved was irrelevant - the issue was distance on a limited energy supply.
This is not a serious competition. It is a "get drunk and jump into the world's filthiest bay while other drunks laugh hysterically at your delightfully wing'ed costume". Definitely not "News for Nerds", or "Stuff that Matters".
...with or without wings, so call me a ground loving elf then?
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
"No drinking Redbull for a period of 12 hours before the competition."
Genetic Engineering - it's more than just fun!
Red Bull is non-alcoholic, however it does contain caffeine, guarana (very similar to caffeine), and ephedra (very similar to, well, amphetamines). Ephedra is basically amphetamine (in terms of it's chemistry and effects) with less buzz and more side-effects. Combined with caffeine and the notion that a store bought drink is healthy, many people have been sent to the hospital for heart attacks, uncontrolable twitching, and hallucinations. And cases of ephedra abuse are on the rise (however it's normally associated with pill-form ephedra). So, it's more like a "let's get tweeked out and jump into the world's filthiest bay while the people who competed in the chugging contest are picking at their skin".
Only the meek get pinched. The bold survive.
Why is there a weight limit of 450 lbs ?
.. fly to whatever heights etc. it should be legit.
Hell, if I design & build a human powered plane weighing ten tons that can take off
Sounds like they put in a ridiculous rule that has no relevancy to what a competition of this nature should be about.
"Less than 30 feet wide,"
Human-powered flight with a smaller wingspan than most gasoline-powered planes? Ouch. IIRC, the guy who flew over the English Channel had something like 50 feet to play with.
"less than 450 lbs"
With a wingspan like that I would certainly hope so!
YEAH !!! Accuracy amongst Nerds is of utmost importance !
Red Bull sponsored one of these last year in Dublin. It was quite amusing. It was held in a harbour inlet with a big platform over the water. The flying/gliding machines didn't really go that far. I think 3 or 4 metres won. The best was a bunch of Finnish guys who were in Dublin having a big piss up before a guy got married. They heard about Flugtag, built something on short notice and made asses of themselves along with everyone else. Quality. Maybe the SF people will 'fly' further that the Dubliners.
We allready had this a few times in Austria. It's a lot of fun. I think it's cool that they took the german title Flugtag which means "fly-day".
Maybe they just want you to work all day and night (that's where Red Bull comes in) to finish this project before deadline.
But hey, they will have free Red Bull there!!! I'm sure.
>> Had I been going to bed earlier every night? Have I been sleeping later? Has Tyler been in charge longer and l
they have combined this event with the "International Chicken-Dance Competition". It was discovered that the movements were essentially the same.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't much like the "send your application we'll tell you if you can compete" idea. They should judge all entries that show up for competition.
I have a strange feeling this isn't so much about competing to see who can build the best human power flying craft, but mora thinly veiled marketing event that they hope to control as much as possible.
I'll bet that the design contraints are there so they can more easily fit the vehicle on a tow-trailer and take it around the country with just a few people as crew. I'll bet the designs are being avaulated for advertising space and visual impact on a crowd rather than functional design.
Then again maybe I've just spend too much time in the presence of marketing companies.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Well, anything to at least give you the opportunity to wreak vengeance against those damn pigeons is a good start (like the ad campaign).
Although competitors would have to be careful if flying over large crowds of people, things would get a bit messy.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
And I thought human-powered flight over short distances like a hundred feet or so with altered microlights was already well established since the 80s.
Was I imagining all that? Too much caffeine?
All I need is a few tins of baked beans!
-- Wibble
Lawn Chair Balloon Flight Link
Photo of Lawn Chair Balloon Flight LONG BEACH, Calif, July 2 (AP) A truck driver with 45 weather balloons rigged to a lawn chair took a 45-minute ride aloft to 16,000 feet today before he got cold, shot some balloons out and crashed into a power line, the police said.
I already have my Red Wings...
They hosted one last year in SF, ran commercials for it etc. Then they cancelled it at the last minute with no notification. Many people showed up and there was a lot of confusion, as they hadn't even bothered to post signs saying it had been cancelled. The website was even down, so there wasn't even anyway to get official information. We just kind of meandered around hoping that someone official would show up, but it never happened.
Pretty lame.
Couple of youngsters next to drug shop flying hi.
All this flap over flying floppy flappers failing and falling over flailing flippers makes me want to flip off these floundering floating flightless floor finding flunkies. Then again it looks like they are having flukey flakey flun, I mean fun.
Table-ized A.I.
Doable? Perhaps for a bit of extra challenge one of the Swedenborg scholars should try entering the contest with an updated version of that early-18th-century saucer-shaped glider-looking thing of his. I've seen their updated models, but never heard of them getting together with new lightweight materials and going in for contests.
Swedenborg's design is probably unstable - has anyone checked that?
Lighter-than-air would seem to be the way to go.
Strap yourself to a miniature blimp, wear some fins for propulsion and steering- your distance would be limited only by the judges' patience, weight would difficult to measure- and unless they add the weight of displaced air to everyone else's total, they should count it as negative(your body weight).
Human powered
Less than 30 ft wide
Less than 450 lbs.-
seems to fit all the rules.
Maybe it is different where you are, but in the UK, there is no Ephedra:
Ingredients: Carbonated Water, Sucrose, Glucose, Citric Acid, Taurine (0.4%), Glucuronolactone (0.24%), Caffiene (0.03%), Inositol, Vitamins (Niacin, Pantothenic Acid, B6, B12), Flavours, Colour (Caramel, Riboflavin)
Yes, I do need to get out more.
Ephedra might be a good idea for RedBull 2.0
You can to get hold of ephedra in some slimming aids though, I think. Given that Caffiene is a pretty nasty and ineffective stimulant ~ makes you twitchy but doesn't improve your concentration, perhaps someone *should* come up with an Ephedra based drink? Any suggestions?
Less than 30 feet wide, less than 450 lbs., only human power for propulsion.
I don't suppose I could enter myself in the contest..
slashdot!=valid HTML
human powered, can I liposuck all the fat from some fat person and run an engine off the fat oil? .. isnt it?
That's human powered
It's a joke.
You are not expected to fly.
It's more about "how many drunken idiots can we get to strap drowning machines to themselves and jump into the San Francisco Bay?"
The Gossamer Condor, which won the Kremer Prize in 1977 is, so far, the smallest human powered aircraft. It has a wingspan of 70 feet. The Gossamer Albatross, which crossed the English Channel, and won the second Kremer Prize, has a wingspan of 90 feet.
A wingspan of 30 feet is pretty mugh guaranteed to not result in flight, if the wings alone are intended to provide the lift, with just human power.
The weight limit lets out most practicaly designs, such as a neutral buoyancy ornithopter with a helium lifting baloon with a 30 foot maximum width (hint: search for "one person helium balloon").
-- Terry
Wings? Who needs wings?
500 bucks worth of canned beans oughtta do it.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
How about human powered flight + ultra-light carbon fiber flywheels?
Peddle at a leisurely pace for 30 minutes, press the "takeoff" button, then continue peddling enough to keep the "fuel gauge" (energy in the flywheel) up to a reasonable level. Have a computer control prop output to maintain a minimal airspeed to conserve energy.
I'm no engineer, but I think this could really work.
-Peter
There is no way in hell that anybody could anything significant with 40ft or less. I'm not a pilot or even terribly proficient with physics, but I don't imagine it would take much to demonstrate that the output necessary to provide enough airflow over 40ft of even the most promising surface to attain sufficient lift would be beyond human ability, even if three 80lb Armstrongs were behind the yoke. And I'm assuming this is a vertical limit as well as a horizontal one, so that rules out things like balloon assist.
Some examples of the state of HPV flight include:
Velair
Daedelus
Musculair
Light Eagle
Sakuzo
40ft. Give me a break. Literally.
My
Limekiller
C'mon moderators. It was on-topic and funny. And it would seem to be legal under the rules.
The devices were quite ingenious (the idea of the show was to popularise engineering) and generally had a kind of cradle of wire and some very light plastic wheels. Some of the things trundled along for ages quite successfully at very low speeds like a couple of yards a minute.
Oh, and I think the makers could rely on the smooth, heavy-duty rubber floor of a TV studio. Traction or terrain surprises were not part of the challenge.
It's maybe a bit late, but tomorrow (Sunday 11th) is the Bognor Birdman (warning: Flash-only site) competition in Bognor Regis, Sussex, UK.
There's a little info sans flash here
The prize money goes up to GBP25,000 (around USD37,000, I think) for anyone able to broach the 100m (~330ft) barrier. The closest so far seems to be 89.2m...So there is incentive for some "real" engineering apart from the obligatory 'take-the-piss' entries :)
Less than 30 feet wide
My entry will be 26 feet in width and 68 feet long.
Oh, and by the way, it flys sideways.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Pseudoephedrine is far from harmless; take this from someone who accidentally ingested 600mg. It's a stimulant only vaguely related to ephedrine (the name comes from a comparison of effects, not chemical relation), and has a much bigger "body load" - it's used in Sudafed in fairly minute doses for its vasoconstricting properties, the idea being that a constricted cappilary won't leak moisture into your nose to create snot.
Ephedrine is a better stimulant, but still by no-means healthful. Most deaths and injuries have been from either severe overdose ("Hey, let's take the whole box of these Herbal XTC pills, since they weren't better than coffee at the suggested amount!") or chronic use in diet/bodybuilding supplements, where the various effects keep the heart rate elevated until the heart muscle fatigues and goes into fibrilation. (Read: Your heart stops.)
Red Bull doesn't contain any of either, but do keep an eye out for hippie drinks and diet supplements containing Ma Huang, or a similar plant I can't remember the name of (sorry) containing a related compound that manages to lead to similar heart damage without as much of a stimulant tipoff.
If you're really curious, ephedrine is best investigated in the form of Mormon Tea, as featured in a certain Gibson novel. This was a preparation originally used by Mormons (who swore off the alcohol in patent medicines) to treat asthma and bronchial ailments. It's just plain ephedra sinica stalks boiled into tea, and tastes not unlike boiled hay. Used responsibly- only a cup or two, and not more than once weekly or so- you'll find that it's much safer and more potent to investigate combinations of DMAE (a nootropic, or 'smart drug' available as a supplement in the US, present naturally in fish), Choline (an amino acid/neurotransmitter, available as a supplement or in fish), Vitamin B5 (important for metabolizing the above/producing your own), and good ol' caffeine. I found DMAE + B5 + some espresso to be "one hell of a buzz," with no ill effects other than a fairly rapid caffeine crash, which additional choline seems to avoid. Those are all compounds naturally involved in alertness, and naturally present in foods, and B5 in particular is 1. definitively good for you and 2. fairly impossible to overdose on, being water-soluble (at worst, undigested quantities makes it through to your gut bacteria, aiding their growth and giving you gas)...
Anyhow, that's my personal opinion, and that combination sure beats ephedra. I find SAM-e (something of a precursor to choline, in a roundabout way) with green tea works less harshly for actual day-long alertness. (It's marketed as an antidepressant, but the effects are that it makes you more alert and thus more capable of dealing with life... it's not an SSRI or MAOI like Prozac or St. John's Wort.)
Oh, and anyone who is abusing/has abused ephedra should be taking CoQ10 to harm-reduce the damage to their heart muscle... and steer clear of energy drinks containing megadoses of B6- that's six, not five- which is considered to aid fat metabolism in such doses, but has the side effect of being a bit neurotoxic/leading to metabolism of *neural* fats, meaning nerve damage. My hands go downright numb for a day if I drink anything loaded (5000% USRDA, and yes, such things are more common than you'd think) with it.
KMX is one energy drink I can name that has the sense to mix caffeine and B5 without a toxic amount of B6. Downside is that it tastes like bee vomit.
Oops. s/ephedra sinica/ephedra nevadensis, to be retentive about it. Sinica is Ma Huang, Nevadensis is American Ephedra, and they're basically the same thing anyway.
There doesn't seem to be rule stipulating that there actually needs to be a person onboard. Just human powered.
I remember that program, professor Heinz Wolfe presented it. Sort of like a 70's version of Scrapheap Challenge, but for boffins and REAL geeks only ;-)
Here's a link to some info about it...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
And this costs, what two bucks? Three dollars? WTF?
You are basically getting highly sugared water (about 5 teaspoons per can) and 80mg of caffeine, which is not that much. If this is your thing, then all the more power to you, but there are vastly cheaper ways to go about it. Personally I just go down to Kmart and buy caffeine pills: each of those is 200mg and you can buy a package of 90 of them for a few dollars. Avoid the brand names, they cost a lot more. And if it's sugar that you crave, then soda should do the trick.
So that just leaves us with these mysterious ingredients taurine and glucuronolactone. Here is where we encounter the manufacturer's (and anyone hocking these three dollar sugar shots) claims of all sorts of "revitalization." Yeah, whatever. I have not the medical knowledge to debunk this load, but just consider that taurine is often an ingredient in baby milk formulas and that when Coca Cola was still a young company they often touted "the wonderful Coca plant and the famous Cola nut" and the "invigorating" power of its mysterious ingredients -- the secret is that there is no secret.
So if you're truly athletic and drink Red Bull for performance, then go read a book on nutrition or sports medicine. How could a drink that's a diuretic and contains only a sip of water possibly be a good sports drink?
Ah, the club crowd -- the company's bread and butter, although they claim otherwise (see the linked article below for a direct quote from a company representative.) Drinking alcohol with Red Bull is a poor man's speedball, caffeine's upper to alcohol's downer. I'm sure it lets you stay awake longer and drink more, and it's oh-so-trendy. I have no problem with this, but just realize that there's nothing magical or special in that $3 can.
An excellent article on Red Bull's company background and marketing tactics, including their fling with extreme-style sports.
If you can build one, more power to you: do it. You will win in at leastone category, and may win overall for effectiely making fun of the making fun.
Given the cost, and the lack of a long enough launching/landing strip, I think it's a non-issue.
-- Terry
The rules state that it requires human "muscle" power. That is a bit unfortunate, but I still think that given enough human muscles, that you ought to be able to convert that to some sort of fuel to power some type of deasel engine.
I wonder if Dr. Lector has any leftovers that can be experimented with...
Load it up with a half dozen big guys in the weight bucket for power.
I think the hardest part would be finding a pilot brave enough to do it!
It would look pretty cool too...
Any Takers?
SF has a sizable hang gliding crowd. They fly from Fort Funston, among other places. There are some low-speed hang gliders that can be launched from a run, and there might, just possibly, be enough of a thermal on the bay side to get some lift.
The restrictions in the rules and the general tone of the web site indicate this is just a promo event for wankers to get pissed and chuck themselves off a low platform.
REAL birdman competitions, on the other hand start with platforms a good 10 metres high and include some outstanding entrants in the human-powered division.
I used to watch the Toriningen competition that takes place on Biwa Lake in Japan. Every year the HPA division would see increasingly insane distances that would have easily won the Kramer prize if it had been a straight line. The contenstant would end up disappearing into the haze over the lake and they'd have to send a chopper to follow it as the rest of the competition went on.
Fantastic stuff.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
You guts are great - Whenever you need to know about the iffy things, Slashdot comes through, with scientific precision. And recipes.
Keep up the good work!
Considering the wingspan rules, real flight is right out. The "human powered" aspect is troubling as well. I'm assuminmg there will be some limitation on devices which allow you to store kinetic energy (bows, flywheels). Then again, they seem pretty darn flexible as to what constitutes flight. The solution is the same solution to all life's little problems. Medieval Siege Equipment. Some kind of carbon fiber trebuchet, a very brave small person and a few largish people to act as the counterweight and push the thing into the bay afterward.
Hey, okay, it's not for you US-Americans ;-)
Red Bull tastes like "GummibÃrchen" from Haribo, just in a fluid form.
Red Bull is more a techno-fun-lifestyle than a serious energy drink.
If you're on a rave, dancing 48 hours non stop, like on the Love Parade in Berlin (take the train on friday, go to parties over nights, be on the Love Parade on saturday, dance in a club the whole night, go to chill out on sundays, go home by train the night to monday) it's much better and much healthier to drink severals of these energy drinks than to eat pills like xtc.
That's what red bull is about.
Bicycles.
With ceramic wheels, and super-strong magnets attached to the forks.
Just make sure you pedal fast enough to levitate.
Once, after a couple of runs, they had run out of egg-and-rubber-band things to do as the running theme linking each week, the name started to look a bit silly.
Heinz had to wear a bow tie of course, so he could be a funny professor on television.
Last year's contest was cancelled because falling out of the sky suddenly became terribly unfunny on September Eleventh, 2000. So said a friend who was doing setup for the event.
I thought he'd said they went ahead and had some sort of party instead though.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
You get more uppers from a 24oz bottle of mtn dew. I'm not personally very worried.
I live in a giant bucket.
The way it worked down under is that they had applicants submit a flying machine design and due to time constraints, picked the "most interesting" 40 to compete. Most interesting seemed to be a mixture of which ones would probably fly and which ones would make the best spectacle. Hence the entry which was actually a red bull sculpted from Polystyrene which spouted fire extinguiser smoke from its nostrils and butt. It just fell into the water, but because it was so cool, it won a big prize.
Unfortunately, the launch day was very windy and the launch platform was fixed so that all competitors had to take off with a stiff tailwind. As you would expect most just could not achieve the necessary launch velocity and just plunged into the water in less than 10m. Some really interesting lightweight, professional looking gliders never got to take to the air due to the tailwind blowing them over and breaking them.
The winner actually flew over 20m before his wing folded and dumped him. Apparently the world record for a flugtag is 86m. How the hell they did that I have no idea.
The rules also state that no stored mechanical energy devices are permitted (springs, air-rams, rubber bands and RATO packs are strictly verboten). You can use pulleys and gears as force multipliers but the base energy source must be human muscle.
In Auckland, the winner had an ingeniuous system of pulleys that actually got him up to a reasonable launch velocity and he did actually fly. He spent NZ$8000 on his machine (carbon fibre and mylar construction) and won $10,000 for his troubles. Big risk, big reward.
People here seem to be taking this so seriously, discussing the ingredients in RedBull and how much further the birdmen in Japan can fly. Is doing silly things for fun an alien concept in geekland?