Red Bull Flutag and Simple Glider Curriculum

I noticed in national news that a new gliding length record had been established in the wacky Flutag event sponsored by Red Bull. A human pilots a glider off a large deck 30 feet over the water while team mates push the glider on top of the deck as far as possible. The winning team were engineers calling themselves the Chicken Whisperers with a glide of 258 feet.


Gary Hinze had created a lab exercise for my website Simple Gliders in the Science and Mathematics Curriculum which was designed for simple model gliders but I thought with enough data the calculations could be applied to the Flutag record.

From Simple Glider Curriculum

NEW DATA from DESIGNER - 9/27/2013

Launch height was only 22 feet, weight 215 pounds, wing area 196 square feet.

From what was given; height 30 feet, length 258 feet, duration around 10 seconds from watching video. A weight of 220 pounds might be used to be well under the 400 pound limit, as a weight close to that was found from one source.

So try to come up with calculations for glide ratio, velocity, L/D, etc.

 Bill Kuhl

http://www.ideas-inspire.com

Additional Information From Designer

Chicken Whispers Chief Designer