Flying high or crashing with style

Don't be surprised if you see a massive slice of deep dish pizza and a cardboard replica of a 1930s mafia car attempting to fly over the water at Chicago's North Avenue Beach this weekend.

Representing two local trademarks, the pizza slice and mafia car are only two of roughly 40 entries joining in on Red Bull's Flugtag 2008 challenge kicking off at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Flugtag challenges teams of everyday people to build homemade, human-powered flying machines and pilot them off a 30-foot high deck in hopes of achieving flight. Flugtag may mean "flying day" in German, but all these crafts ultimately splash into the waters below. They are judged not only on their flight's distance, but creativity and showmanship as well.

Team members of these two human-powered flying contraptions each believe their machines will be aerodynamic enough to break the current Flugtag record of flying 155 feet.

The team of the deep dish pizza slice, Pie in the Sky! from Elk Grove Village, has been working on its design throughout the summer.

"We want to fly and look good while doing it," said Vinnie Maniola, member of Pie in the Sky!'s flight crew. "Whenever our day jobs don't get in the way we spend every spare moment working on our giant slice of pizza."

Along with constructing the 30-foot-long slice of pizza, the team has created a T-shirt for helping the charity Autism Speaks. Proceeds will help fund research into the causes, prevention and treatments of autism.

"As a group we decided that we not only wanted to join Flugtag for entertainment purposes, but to help others on the way," said pilot Marty Hahnfeld. "One hundred percent of the proceeds from our T-shirt sales will go toward helping the charity." T-shirts can be purchased on their Web site www.pieinthesky08.com.

Pie in the Sky! plans on performing a short skit before carting their giant slice of pizza off the pier.

"We have tried to think of all the things that could go wrong," said Maniola. "We have considered factors like wind resistance, how fast a group of 40-year-olds can push the car and considered the raw engineering of how it's going to work on flight day."

The team is currently touching up its design and predicts they will be ready by the day of the event.

"If it flies, then we will all be heroes," said Hahnfeld. "If we go down, we'll still crash with style."

Waukegan-based team The Perfect Getaway thinks their 1930s mafia-style Cadillac will be the ultimate flying machine at Flugtag.

Before launching off the pier, the honeycomb cardboard mafia car will extend out a pair of 20-foot nylon-wrapped wings from inside the car.

"We wanted to create a Chicago-style themed flying machine," said Jon Olsen, member of The Perfect Getaway's flight crew. "While constructing our mafia car our biggest challenge was figuring out how to keep the wings hidden and how to construct them so they could hinge and bend."

Since early June the team has been formulating ideas and plans for their aircraft.

The team plans on performing a cops and robbers bank robbery skit before takeoff on Saturday.

"We will have stage flight music playing in the background along with members of our group running away with money bags," said pilot David Rettig. "All of us are nervous about performing but we are excited to have the chance to fly far."

Both Pie in the Sky! and The Perfect Getaway are expected to perform halfway throughout the show.