Meet the Teams Competing at the Red Bull Flugtag in Boston

Photo by Sergei Chuzavkov / AP

Brave souls from 30 teams will dive into the Charles River when the Red Bull Flugtag flies into Boston for the first time ever on Saturday, August 20.

The annual event is a zany competition where participants—usually dressed in crazy costumes—build and pilot homemade gliders, which are used to fly off of a 28-foot high deck before plunging into the water below. This year’s crop of contestants includes groups from all walks of life, including brainy MIT engineers and teachers from Boston Public Schools.

Before you check out the Red Bull Flugtag this weekend, get to know some of the competitors.

Name: 2 Flug 2 Furious
Affiliation: Buffalo, New York
What They’re Building: Big Wing Supra
Fun Fact: 20 percent of our team can grow a beard.
Trash Talk: Since this is our second Flugtag, we will be winning.

Name: 90’s Nostalgia
Affiliation: Northeastern University engineering alumni
What They’re Building: A schoolyard glider thrown together from found parts, a la Ed, Edd n Eddy.
Fun Fact: The only member of ZZ top without a beard is named “Frank Beard.”
Trash Talk: We’re the most nostalgic…about the 90’s.

Name: Barstool Pirates
Affiliation: Stoolie Nation
What They’re Building: A pirate ship that will fly to the moon.
Fun Fact: Nate’s got the freaks (fun or not, that fact is known).
Trash Talk: Name one team that’s going to beat us…you can’t.

Name: The Boston Crème Flies
Affiliation: Motus LLC
What They’re Building: A flying slice of Boston crème pie.
Fun Fact: We’ve eaten more pie than the rest of the teams COMBINED!
Trash Talk: We’re the creamiest team, with pie in the sky dreams. Our flying skills are just the cherry on top of a cake of power. Eat up!

Name: Boston Pours Swan Dive Team
Affiliation: We’re just a ragtag team of pals united in our passion for flying machines, tutus, and providing a delicious array of beverages to the Greater Boston area.
What They’re Building: Flying Swan
Fun Fact: Swans can fly as fast as 60 mph! We’re looking to double that.
Trash Talk: We heard that some of the other teams have developed acute cases of cygnophobia since they found out we had a team – for good reason.

Name: Breakdown Charlie
Affiliation: Rapid7
What They’re Building: We are building a replica of an MBTA train. To understand our skit, you’ll have to be familiar with the infamous runaway Red Line situation of December 2015…
Fun Fact: Seven of us at Rapid7 are working on the craft together. We’re still not exactly sure which five will be flying off the ramp day-of. We might draw straws to figure it out!
Trash Talk: Our company mascot is a moose because the plural and singular versions of that word are the same. If you hear us yelling “one moose” while we’re flying off the ramp, it means we’re all in this together.

Photo by Jonathan Lauderdale

Name: Copezilla
Affiliation: EAPS, MIT
What They’re Building: We are creating the largest ever, flying copepod to soar over the Charles River.
Fun Fact: Many copepods make large daily vertical migrations to feed and to hide from their predators.
Trash Talk: For their size, copepods are the strongest and fastest animals on Earth! So Copezilla will have no trouble hopping off the Red Bull Flugtag ramp and across the Charles River on August 20th!

Name: DinoSOAR
Affiliation: MassChallenge
What They’re Building: We’re building a horrifying amalgamation of velociraptor and golden eagle.
Fun Fact: Team DinoSOAR has consumed over 150 cans of Red Bull in the process of building our craft.
Trash Talk: Team DinoSOAR is going to get prehistoric on the competition and glide to victory! (Barring any wayward, climate-altering asteroids — our only weakness.)

Name: Fight Orr Flight
Affiliation: A group of passionate hockey fans
What They’re Building: Bobby Orr atop a Zamboni, still flying after scoring the Stanley Cup-winning goal in 1970.
Fun Fact: We’re planning to set the world flight distance record for NHL Hall of Famers.
Trash Talk: We don’t need flight simulators or lines of code to fly; we just need determination, a little grit, and a ton of duct tape!

Name: The Five Fold Fliers
Affiliation: N/A
What They’re Building: Hopefully the largest “paper” airplane the city of Boston has ever seen.
Fun Fact: We’ve been really into designing in virtual reality lately and have worked out a 3D virtual model of our aircraft.
Trash Talk: Come Saturday August 20, we’re not only going to fly, we’re going to look good doing it.

Name: Flite-Riot
Affiliation: Racing drone pilots and model plane builders behind YouTube shows Rotor Riot and Flite Test.
What They’re Building: Our design will be a mix of high performance engineering and tape, foam and stuff we found in the trash bin.
Fun Fact: We’re a mix of people from Ohio, Boston, Atlanta and Australia, coming together just for this event.
Trash Talk: Together, we’re unstoppable, that is, if we can figure out how to put a person on a plane the size of a small dog, with no drone motors.

Name: The Flying Dead
Affiliation: The Protein Chef
What They’re Building: Individual Human Vertical Transporter (IHVT)
Fun Fact: Our wheel supports are made from recycled crutches!
Trash Talk: The best worst dancing zombie pilots ever – Guinness Book 2016

Name: The Flying Selfies
Affiliation: MIT mechanical engineering alumni
What They’re Building: We are building a “life-size” selfie stick. Approximately 20 feet long, not only will this selfie stick fly (for some definition of flying), it will also collapse down (like its lesser cousins) and take photos of adoring fans (and its ratchet flight crew).
Fun Fact: The team consists of Doctor Self-Discipline, Colonel Self-Help, Señor Self-Sufficient, Sergeant Self-Employed, and Captain Self-Destruction.
Trash Talk:While those other teams are busy crunching their aerodynamics numbers and slimming down to reduce their payload, we’re busy picking our filters and slimming down to fit in our cheetah print dress (maybe with a bit of aerodynamics number crunching on the side).

Name: Greased Lightin’
Affiliation: We are a supporters club for the the New York Red Bulls Major League Soccer club.
What They’re Building: We are building a 1930’s hot rod and the theme is the movie Grease.
Fun Fact: This is our 3rd time doing Flugtag.
Trash Talk: We are supporters for RedBull New York Soccer Club. The only team worthy of the name New York.

Name: Gusdave and the Whiteheads
Affiliation: Five Connecticutian Historical Contrarians
What They’re Building: A classic craft influenced by the original 1901 Gustave Whitehead CONDOR #21 – with a special surprise feature!
Fun Fact: The first successful powered flight was actually piloted by Gustave Whitehead, in New England, a full two years before the Wright Brothers launched their machine.
Trash Talk: We’re going to rock history with our flying stuff, and return aviation glory to New England!

Name: Mass Instruction
Affiliation: BPS teachers
What They’re Building: We are building a pencil with lined paper for wings.
Fun Fact: None of us our engineers or have experience undertaking a project anything like this. We have been operating with a philosophy of trying hard and saying yes to everything.
Trash Talk: We may not be experts but those who underestimate our ability will be inside for recess.

Name: Mass Mavericks
Affiliation: The Massachusetts Lodge (Freemasons)
What They’re Building: A F14 Tomcat made out of Home Depot material capable of winning Top Gun (or the Flugtag).
Fun Fact: Flown a plane, driven a boat, and Swam in the Charles. Now I get to do all three at once.
Trash Talk: It’s OK, Bobby Orr and the Wright Brothers didn’t fly that long the first time.

Photo Provided

Name: Monkey Ballers
Affiliation: MIT
What They’re Building: A flying banana piloted by a deranged monkey.
Fun Fact: Lack of banana awareness is believed to be the leading cause of global warming.
Trash Talk: We’re the best dancers, the best builders, the best pilots, and the best looking. Those aren’t trash talk, those are facts.

Name: Murphy’s Claw
Affiliation: Friends from Cambridge
What They’re Building: A flying lobster roll!
Fun Fact: We’re software engineers by day, mechanical/aeronautical engineers by night!
Trash Talk: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong… for you.

Name: Possibilities Are Coming
Affiliation: Draper
What They’re Building: Our aircraft is modeled off the dragons of Game of Thrones. This team of Draper students is building and designing a craft to soar just like Daenerys Targaryen on her dragon.
Fun Fact: Their jump will be based on a Game of Thrones scene in season 5 episode 9, featuring Daenerys’ flight from the Sons of the Harpy.
Trash Talk: “We obviously didn’t communicate clearly. We’re here to discuss your surrender, not mine.” – Daenerys Targaryen

Name: Something Wonderful
Affiliation: Lovepop
What They’re Building: A very big unexpected piece of art, and a little bit of Boston.
Fun Fact: We’re building the biggest pop-up sculpture carried on a flying craft.
Trash Talk: Lovepop is not really into trash talking. Just winning. Especially the dance.

Name: SPACEWOLF
Affiliation: NASA (National Aeronatics and SPACEWOLF!!;&;$ Association)
What They’re Building: We’re not building anything. We’re physically realizing a craft that has always been. An aerial vessel for your world that transcends time, gravity, and space.
Fun Fact: We planned this all out 10 years ago aimlessly drifting on canoes.
Trash Talk: We don’t have a team of engineers. No wind tunnels. No budget. We built this ourselves with very little science, math, and common sense. We are Team SPACEWOLF.

Name: Team Flyin’ Ryan
Affiliation: Hospitality industry
What They’re Building: It’s a modern take on a Da Vinci design.
Fun Fact: What happens when three bartenders, a partical physicist, and a biotech engineer enter Flugtag? Flight.
Trash Talk: It’s going to be the most impressive glider at the event – no doubt.

Name: Team Flying Franks
Affiliation: Northeastern University
What They’re Building: Hot Dog
Fun Fact: Team member Tom “Mustard Mogul” Minieri recently won a casual hot dog eating contest, downing 11 dogs in 10 minutes.
Trash Talk: The competition will never want to eat a hot dog again.

Name: Team Papi
Affiliation: Restaurant
What They’re Building: 24-foot wing that should fly deep into the Charles.
Fun Fact: Grew up in Boston, but the only team that is representing Western Mass.
Trash Talk: It is all about marketing and we will have the upper hand on August 20th, might be a little surprise in the making. Everyone will just have to wait and see.

Name: Two if by Sea
Affiliation: Sons of Liberty
What They’re Building: Revolutionary warship to symbolize our forefathers fighting for freedom.
Fun Fact: We have a case of Twisted’s ready to throw off the vessel to make is a Boston Tea Party.
Trash Talk: If history repeats itself we will win this war known as Red Bull Flugtag Boston.

Name: What Sphinx?
Affiliation: Businesses, come at us!
What They’re Building: Much like the pyramids of Egypt, we are working on building another wonder of the world: a flying human powered stink machine in the shape of a Sphinx!
Fun Fact: None of us knew how to build a flying human powered stink machine in the shape of a Sphinx! But we’re learning quickly.
Trash Talk: We want to wish our competitors the best of luck, we hope everyone plays fair and has a good time, and we wish all the people of the earth love and peace. Also, if our dads could show up this time and fulfill their lifelong promises to attend one of our events, that would be great.