Flugtag! (lots of pictures)

[md]

Red Bull's Flugtag event was held today; and seeing as I had nothing better to do I figured I would go and watch people throw themselves off a pier in the hopes of flying. For the most part the contestants failed horribly at flying however even in failure they were hilarious. The A-Team, bees, bananas, the cast of Sex & The City (so they claimed), the Redbull Barron, who knew there were so many nutters in Ottawa?

As clearly spending the afternoon watching people do silly things and not providing pictures would be bad, below are the best shots. Appologies for the blurriness and difficult angles; the best place to take pictures was from the bridge... which was closed because there were too many people on it. I ended up a significant distance away standing on a bench holding a 500mm lens.






























More pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jjblackwood/RedbullFlugtagAugust3rd2008

[Clayton]

I had made a point of trying to be there this year, seeing as I'm only 3 hours away, but it just didn't happen

[btiffin]

md; Thanks for that! A lot. We got there just shy of 1pm, having missed a bus. With the stroller and the 5 year old. Our best vantage point was a bare glimpse of the videotron. We bailed and went to the Children's Museum instead. (I'd frown, but it's actually a pretty cool place when you are watching a little one smile and laugh - but it wasn't Flugtag.)

All we saw up close was the wrecks, after the fact. The girls had a great time just now matching your pics to what they saw in the Flugtag trash heap so, thanks again. (I'll leave it to her mom to get a now overly excited little one to sleep. It's ok by me, I got to blame you md).

Cheers

[md]

The best place to watch from was actually on the ontario side of the bridge. Little farther away so you couldn't see them dance as well (without a BFH lens) but you got a great view of the run-up and destruction.

[Insectoid]

I have always wanted to see this, but live WAY to far away (6-ish hours). Actually, I've always wanted to enter, just for the chance to throw myself off a pier in the hopes of flying! I like the tank one, it really looked like it was going to fly, the wheels looked to my like they'd generate a lot of lift, and the turret would disturb the tension on the air, making it flow better over the dynamic chunkiness of the hull .

~Insectoid