Drunken devils, collegiate rivals, gigantic football helmets, and much more will take to the skies over Tempe Town Lake, Saturday.
Three teams will represent Arizona State University, April 29, at the Tempe Flugtag, an event put on by Red Bull, the maker of Red Bull energy drinks.
"A Flugtag team is where up to five people work together building handmade human powered flying craft, which one person pilots through the air and into a body of water," said Elizabeth Ordenstein with Red Bull Communications.
There have been more than 35 Flugtags around the world since the first Flugtag put on by Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder of Red Bull, in 1991 in Vienna, Austria.
The Tempe Flugtag, which means 'flying day' in German, will be one of the three Flugtags in the United States this year, Ordenstein said.
"[Tempe is] just such a great town, a great college town, and we knew that we would get a lot of people out to the lake," Ordenstein said. "It's just the perfect venue."
The teams must build creative flying machines and launch them off a 30-foot platform into Tempe Town Lake. The three teams representing ASU will be competing with 31 other teams from Arizona and around the country.
The rules are pretty simple, Ordenstein said. All craft must be human powered, no engines, and no external energy sources. No more than five people on a team, and the pilot must be at least 18 years old.
"Participants generally spend about two months designing and building their flying machines," Ordenstein said.
All the teams will be competing for three main prizes, judged on three criteria: distance, creativity, and showmanship. First place will receive a pilot training course, or cash equivalent of $7,500. Second place gets skydiving lessons, or $3,000. Third place will learn how to paraglide, or take $1,500, Ordenstein said.
Red Bull has lined up seven local celebrities to judge the event: world class acrobatic pilots Kirby Chambliss and Tim Giffen, actor and bullfighter Don "Hollywood" Yates, ultra marathon runner Pam Reed, and three former Arizona Cardinals, Michael Bankston, Eric Hill, and Eric Swann.
The teams will also be competing for two special prizes; Most Creative and People's Choice, Ordenstein said.
"Each team has two minutes to do an original skit to pump up the crowd and impress the judges before launching the craft off the flight deck," Ordenstein said.
Teams can don costumes and wigs, and set their skit to music to try and engage the crowd, Ordenstein said.
The crowd, at special voting kiosks or through text messaging, will vote for their favorite team to win the People's Choice award, Ordenstein said.
Three teams will try and take capitalize on Arizona State University's hometown advantage.
The Devil Destroyer
The Devil Destroyer team is made up of five ASU alumni who graduated between 1998 and 1999: Team Captain Andy Falvey is currently a Tucson resident, Team Pilot and FAA licensed helicopter pilot Dave Tanzi hails from Tempe, and Phoenix residents Bob Rints, Mike Cross, and Regan Whichman round out the group.
The team will be constructing an oversized ASU football helmet as their craft, Falvey said, in an email interview.
"We chose the ASU football helmet for a lot of reasons," said Falvey. "Having been transferred to Tucson for my job, and being chastised by the Wild Kitten fans - who have a huge inferiority complex about ASU - just made me love the Sun Devils that much more."
The team has a support group of engineers who are helping them construct the giant helmet, Falvey said.
"Our strategy is to push hard and hopefully catch some kind of miracle hurricane wind to push our baby," Falvey said. "We are training hard so hopefully that will pay off."
Falvey said that the team's pre-launch skit and costumes are still being debated, but that it should be the best skit there.
"We would like to win the cash and use part of it to donate to the Pat Tillman fund," Falvey said. "With the rest of it we want to throw a huge party, the likes of which have never been seen!"
Fork Um!
Team Fork Um is comprised of five students from the ASU women's rugby team: Team Captain Kate Digglemann is a marketing junior, Calli Pisel is a kinesiology junior, Team Pilot Katy Powers is a sophomore political science major, undecided freshman Rachel Miller and Maddi Renolds complete the flight team.
Team Fork Um will fly a nine and a half foot pitchfork made from PVC and plywood into Tempe Town Lake, Pisel said.
The team received $1,000 from Streets of New York, a valley pizza and brewery chain, to fund construction, Digglemann said.
"We figured, we're crazy," Digglemann said. "We can jump off a ramp."
Fork Um's pre-flight skit will feature the pilot dressed as ASU mascot Sparky, who will chase around another member of the team dressed as the U of A mascot Wildcat. Then the pitchfork will be fired at the Wildcat standing at the end of the platform, knocking them into the water, said Nikki Garcea, marketing junior and member of the ASU women's rugby team.
"We don't expect to be the farthest ... ," Garcea said. "But out strategy is to focus around the college rivalry."
The team hopes to take home some cash, Digglemann said. The cash will help fund a trip to Fiji, for the ASU women's rugby team, to play a Fijian rival. The team gets minimal funding from the university, and must pay for the trip out of their own pockets.
The Dipsomaniacal Devils
The Dipsomaniacal Devils are a gang of five ASU freshmen: Team Captain Christoph Weber and Bret Lafave are undecided Barrett Honors College students, Tyler Quinn is a business major, Mitch Nielsen is an aerospace engineering student, and Team Pilot Steve Brennick is a mechanical engineering major. All are members of a new ASU fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi.
A dipsomaniac is one who has an insatiable craving for alcoholic beverages, Weber said.
"One of our goals is to show that ASU really is the world's number one party school," Weber said.
The Dipsomaniacal Devils are constructing an ambitious 30-foot tall Sparky, made from PVC pipe and wrapped in fabric. It will be accessorized with a pitchfork and giant beer bong, Weber said.
Funding for, and a place to build the giant Sparky were donated by City Wide Plumbing, owned by Quinn's father, Weber said.
"I think if we have a 30-foot Sparky, Tempe is going to be pretty into it," Weber said.
The team's pilot will sit atop Sparky's head, 60 feet off the water, equipped with a hang glider for distance.
"We got an old decrepit hang glider off Ebay," Weber said.
Quinn said he is not worried about piloting the craft from so high up, but that the crash landing scares him a little bit.
The team will dress up as the 80's metal band Twisted Sister, and rock out to their hit single "I Wanna Rock."
"There is a possibility of a man thong coming out," Weber said.
Ordenstein described the Flugtag as an event where the ordinary get to be extraordinary.
"Basically, there are so many sporting events out there that people can watch from the bleachers or on TV, but they can't participate in themselves," Ordenstein said. "So we wanted to create a fun, spectator friendly, event where the average Joe is the hero of the day."
"Plus, it's pretty damn funny," Ordenstein said.
Reach the reporter at jay.jenkins@asu.edu.
