Sidney Set To Soar In Redbull Flugtag

While most of us were bricking it over exams last term, four engineers from Sidney found time to qualify for the Redbull Flugtag.

Cambridge team Air-Row-Plane designed a plane shaped like a rowing boat to enter into the amateur aviation competition. The design beat 100s of other applications to make it into the final 35 of the competition.

In their application the team boasted of their: “great theme, fantastic team [and] oarsome puns!”

The Redbull Flugtag is an annual competition in which competitors launch their homemade flying machines off a pier in a bid to take flight or at least cover the greatest distance. The designs rarely fly at all and most enter for the entertainment value.

Team Air-Row-Plane

But Ben Phelps, Andrew Pilkington, Adam Wills, and James Rickenbach, the brains behind team Air-Row-Plane, are hoping their design will actually take to the skies.

“Two of us are good at making planes,” Phelps told The Tab.“We’ve done all the courses we could do to make a plane. The other two are chemical engineers but they’re good lads.”

Despite their expertise, the group still have their work cut out for them. Phelps said: “Because of other commitments, we’ve got a week to design it, then a couple of weekends to build it. Time is tight.”

The boys’ design

Phelps also said that the theme of the plane will be “generic Cambridge stereotypes.” Aside from shaping the plane like a rowing boat, the team will also dress up as stereotypes when flying the contraption. Members of the team will dress in rowing lycra, a tux and top hat, and a scientist’s lab coat.

As if  this wasn’t enough to emphasis their brainy background, in their application the team said they: “plan to recreate the atmosphere of the Oxford-Cambridge boatrace on the ramp.”

The actual competition will take place on 17th July in Leeds, and you can follow the team’s progress on their Facebook page.