Oh, those magnificent men in their non-flying machines…
Continuing a wonderful trend of happening upon unusual events (see La Tomatina, Tall Boat Races, Oktoberfest and the Bretagne Celtic Festival), I was lucky enough to be on hand for the Hong Kong Red Bull Flugtag, the first time it’s been held in Asia.
If you’re not familiar with the event, it’s a brilliant marketing effort by Red Bull which plays off of their “gives you wings” tagline.
The supposed intent of the competition is to see who can build a human powered vehicle that flies the furthest. In reality, though, groups use it as an excuse to dress up and act silly. Their “flying machines” are built with all the care of a high school homecoming float made by students drunk on peach schnapps. And they fly about as well as a parade float would if you pushed it off a 6 meter high ramp.
In this environment, the event took on the tone and appearance of a wacky Japanese game show with a gigantic audience. 40 teams gave it their best shot at creating the ultimate flying device.
My personal favorite – Oceanic Flight 815
An 8-bit Darth Vader and X-wing.
Each team leads off by doing a 30 second choreographed dance/stunt routine. And by “choreographed” I mean, not at all.
Once they’ve done that little intro, the contraption is maneuvered to the starting line and then the team pushes it along until it takes flight. In most cases, this just meant that it got shoved off the end of the ramp and dropped straight into the water.
With some, the whole thing fell apart before it even launched and they ended up just heaving it over the side (along with the pilot).
This guy flew better than his airplane did.
It’s not a good sign when your ground crew falls in along with you.
This does not end well. Just like Lost.
All in all, a fantastically fun day with a huge turnout. Photos were NOT an easy trick due to the tens of thousands who showed up – all holding up noise makers and cameras of their own. The best vantage point would have been from one of the boats in the water (which appeared to be sponsor seating).
To that point, here is a wonderful video compilation of a number of the crashes taken from the harbor (from HongKongHustle.com) .
One last video to share: rather than a dance routine, a group did an intro video that’s about 4 minutes long. It was the event’s highlight for me and for much of the crowd – it shows Team Death Star in scenes around Hong Kong. Watching Darth Vader interacting with people like a tourist was classic, especially the part where he’s asking Hong Kong police for directions.
