Wednesday, November 10, 2010

2010 Red Bull Flutag

I came down to Sydney for the Red Bull Flutag to help out on the ramp and potentially fly. There was a big turn out of spectators up to 30,000 at any given time. I had a quite a few crew helping out Red Bull on the day. Brendan was Flight controller on the ramp, I, my brother, Shannon were also getting the craft up and onto the ramp for thier flights. Dave Seib was organising getting the craft down to the ramp from their hangars through the narrow paths and trees. Being located in the Botanical this task was not easy and the crew all did an amazing job of getting everyone their without breaking anything. Well almost, I managed to pop my knee out of place walking down the ramp very early in the day. I was forced to ice up and bandage and do my job sitting down.. I immediately pulled out of doing the flight as I could not even hold wait on my leg. After a few hours of watching people just falling off the edge of the ramp in style something had to fly. I could see the look on some of the bosses faces as they really wanted me to show the crowd what could be done in a hang glider. I talked to a few of the boys and we convinced each other that I could hop off the ramp with a guy on each sidewire dragging me. I had lots of experience to choose from and grabbed Jonas from Germany and Shannon maggot to run me off the ramp. After a quick interview on the ramp with the Tv crew it was time to see if I could break the world record of 63m in my hang glider. I waited for a little bit of wind and hop we went down the runway towards the edge of the 7m platform. The boys did a great job and off I went gliding on just past the world record marker. It is the 3rd marker on the right of the photo below. CHECK THE FLIGHT OUT HERE ON YOUTUBE. Looking back at the crowd from the VIP boat. The best distance from the official crafts was 20.5m breaking the Australian record set two years ago. The winnner from team SAAA got an all expenses paid weekend away at the final F1 race in Dhubai next weekend.. After the hard days work it was time to board the party boat of a lifetime.. It was full of free drink, food, women and the best DJ and sound system. It was set to be a nothing less than what you would expect from a Red Bull party. We crusied around the sydney habour and even got a fireworks show and then docked all drunk happy many hours later..:-) Big thanks to Red Bull for another fantastic event and party..