Trip Summary
Destination: Hyde Park, London
Distance: Approx 4.5 metres, downwards
Vehicles: Home-made flying machine
Trip Diary
What the flug?
Isn’t Cary Grant dead?
Down-diddly-down-down
I don’t want to drown dressed as a banana
Let’s build a homemade flying machine and for it’s maiden flight leap off a nine metre high platform over water. Let’s also wear comedy fancy dress that’s it’s impossible to swim in. It was a simple plan. Fly further than the Wright Brothers and gain worldwide fame for pushing the boundaries of unpowered flight. It was a flawed plan.
What the flug?
Flug Tag. Sounded remotely rude and from the pictures on the internet, something we should be involved in. Some further research was necessary so we sent Oz and Jim on a scouting mission to Belfast for the Northern Irish version of the event. They checked into the Europa Hotel, later learning it is officially the most bombed hotel in Europe. Luckily breakfast contained the only bangers.
Having witnessed “competitors” plunge in to the River Lagan having achieved a distance greater in the vertical than the horizontal, we knew it was something for us. Oz and Jim came back armed with pictures and an extensive debrief.
“Basically we need to design an entry that hasn’t been done before and is suitably daft. Makes no difference whether it flies ten metres or collapses on the runway.”
“How about an Extreme Trifle?”
“Done.”.
The meeting was adjourned and we went to the pub. All we had to do now was register our interest and wait for the next event.
Some months later the email arrived in our inbox inviting us to submit an entry for the next event to be held in London’s Hyde Park.
We immediately set to work and an email was fired off to our mate who is rather handy with a pencil. “Draw us a flying trifle. Make it look daft.”
He duly obliged and we think you’ll agree he delivered on the brief. The Red Bull judging panel certainly thought so and we were awarded with a coveted entry confirmation.
We were assigned a Red Bull rep to look after us and guide us through the process. She arranged the first meeting in a pub. It was a good start. After being handed some goody bags she enquired as to whether we would mind being filmed during the build process. Despite the fact we had not yet thought about how to build the thing we promptly agreed as that meant twatting about in front of TV cameras, something we rather enjoy.
“So Matt. How are we going to build it?” Drawing on our previous experience with the Red Bull Soap Box event we basically went out and bought the same ingredients. A giant plastic water butt, some polystyrene and some wood.
The Flying Trifle was go.
