Teams from all over the country will flock to the V&A Waterfront in an attempt to achieve what the Wright brothers did many years ago.
|||Cape Town - Teams from all over the country will flock to the V&A Waterfront in an attempt to achieve what the Wright brothers did many years ago, at Sunday’s Red Bull Flugtag.
Forty-one teams, with high hopes for their home-crafted machines, will take the plunge off a 6m-high ramp in the hope of travelling further than their competitors before plunging into the Atlantic Ocean.
Red Bull said tomorrow’s Flugtag, in South Africa for the second time, was highly anticipated. “In the past two weeks the competition was held in San Francisco and Miami. This is the 123rd version of the competition. It was last in SA in 2002. This year we had over 400 entries and managed to narrow it down to 41 teams that will compete, with the youngest competitor just 17 years old.”
Flying machines have to weigh less than 120kg without the pilot, and the wingspan may not exceed 8m. The machines can be made from polystyrene-, hydrocarbon- or paper-based products.
Two Cape Town teams hoping to take first prize at the Waterfront’s Jetty 1 are the Grandmark Flying Matchbox and the Cape Mayans.
The Cape Mayans have built The Phoenix, a plane modelled after the Condor – a bird closely associated with Mayan culture.
“There’s been a lot of effort and love put into building our plane. We’ve been working three or four times a week for the past eight weeks. Winning would be great, but it’s more about the fun,” one of the Mayans, Jeremy Moyle, said.
Grandmark Flying Matchbox, a group of Grandmark International employees from Elsies River, have built a life-size Lion matchbox with wings.
The team is hoping to take the first prize for the Tehillah Community Collaborative, a centre which provides HIV/Aids programmes and services for the unemployed and victims of abuse in the Elsies River, Eden Park and Upington communities.
The Red Bull Flugtag starts at 10am on Sunday.
sibongakonke.mama@inl.co.za
Weekend Argus