Nashville's flying banjo

Anyone with courage, a talent for engineering and a pinch of craziness in their bag can also embark on air travel without a motor and without a boarding pass. Prerequisite: The planned travel distance is no more than 155 feet (47 m) – as with the winners of the Red Bull Flugtag in Nashville.

A blown knee, two broken collar bones, two concussions, a broken leg, a dislocated finger, numerous stitches and multiple cases of attention deficit disorder: The brothers Vincent can look back on a comprehensive list of spectacular car, climbing, skydiving and water-sport crashes. No less daredevil, but much less dangerous was their latest challenge – taking off from a 30-foot (9 m) ramp with a self-made flying machine in Nashville and afterwards landing more or less softly in the Cumberland River – like 26 other teams that took part in the Red Bull Flugtag in Nashville.

New US record: 155 feet

Their enthusiasm for not quite every-day records didn’t just help the so-called “Greasy Brothers” to win in front of 80,000 spectators on June 23: With their friend Brad Moore and Luke Simmons, Blake, Brandon and Brody Vincent also set a North American distance record with the “Rocky Top Rocket.” With 155 feet they pulverized the standing best performance of 81 feet, and did so with a flying mountaintop, which needed an over-dimensional banjo as launching pad – reflecting the music historical significance of the event location.

Few rules, a lot of room for creativity

The rules for participation are the same in all Red Bull Flugtag events: no flying machine is allowed to be wider than 30 feet and – including the pilot – weigh more than 450 lbs (204 kg); and no machine is allowed to be powered by anything other than pure muscle. Alongside the flying banjo, 26 other teams fulfilled these criteria – among them also a manned sombrero and a flying submarine.

All-clear for Austin

The Red Bull Flugtag (German for: flying day) was first held in 1991 in Austria, where also the distance world record was set in 2000: 195 feet (59 m). Ambitious tinkerers will have their next chance to break the world record on August 25 at the Red Bull Flugtag in Austin, Texas. Other Red Bull Flugtag events will take place on September 16 in Bucharest, October 6 and 7 in Rome, on November 2 in Kuwait and on November 23 in Dubai.