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By BEN MCCARTY
News staff writer
August 2, 2008
Long before humans took the air in the most rickety of flying
machines, we have wanted to fly the old fashion way: like birds.
Why use something easy like jet or internal combustion engines
when we can flap our arms like wings or develop some other
unwieldy contraption? After all, if Icarus could do it, why
couldn’t we?
Oh right, Icarus flew so close to the sun, his feathers melted
off and he plunged to his death.
As it turned out, that was significantly higher than anyone else
attaching wings to their arms ever got.
But it has not been for lack of trying.
Eddie Rickenbacker is an American hero who is rapidly fading
into distant memory. The race car driver/World War I flying
ace/barnstormer/survivor of 26-days lost at sea during World War
II began his flying days humbly.
According to the Rickenbacker biography Ace of Aces, as a youth
he attached a set of canvas wings to his arms and jumped off a
barn. He flew about 15 feet, and most of that was comprised of
plummeting to earth.
I got my start in flying much the same way. As a young man I
believed that by cutting up Pepsi boxes, duct-taping them
together and leaping off an embankment near my house, I would
soon be soaring along.
I never made it to the embankment, as the wings ripped apart
when my little brother and my dad were trying to help boost me
along.
Since the wing ripped on his side, I was certain that it was all
my little brother’s fault I didn’t fly that day.
In retrospect, that whole idea was about as smart as the time we
tried to fly original Star Wars X-Wing Starfighter toys off the
roof.
They broke, and the crack of plastic shattered my parents hopes
for having my college tuition paid for by collectors items.
Other than the whole dashing American-hero bit, the similarities
between Rickenbacker and I pretty much end there.
But plenty of brave - or just plain crazy - people continue to
try to follow in the noble footsteps of Icarus, Rickenbacker and
McCarty.
Some of those will be at the Portland waterfront this weekend
for the city’s second Red Bull Flug Tag event.
The whole idea is to build the most ridiculous-looking
un-powered flying machine possible and push it into the
Willamette River.
Most of the crafts are lucky to even make it that far, as many
often just fall over on the launch platform.
Teams spend months working on the contraptions, far longer than
the 30 minutes or so I spent on my Pepsi-wing project, and come
up with all sorts of elaborate designs.
Some of them look as though they might actually be able to
sustain flight for a few seconds; others, modeled after
everything from cows to guitars, plummet straight into the
water.
Even though we have gone to the moon, can fly around the world
invisible to radar at supersonic speeds and may even soon have
functioning jet packs, none of those will ever be as fun as
trying to achieve the goal of flight through our own power and
out-there designs.
Except for Icarus - he didn’t wind up having too much fun.
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