by Joe Buffaloe
Daily Lobo
We all know that wolves can howl.
But they might be able to fly, too.
Albuquerque will be represented at Red Bull Flugtag Arizona in Tempe on Saturday by the team El Vuelo Del Lobo, which has built a flying apparatus in the shape of a wolf.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Flugtag - "flying day" in German - is a competition in which teams build aerial crafts from scratch, then launch them off of a 30-foot tall ramp into a lake. Teams are judged on distance, creativity and showmanship. Designs this year include a flying toilet, a trailer home, a giant taco and a flying fish.
El Vuelo Del Lobo consists of captain Jason Barnes, pilot Austin Wetsch, and teammates Chris Keaty, Kenny Kashuba, Tyler Wagner and Nathanael Marshall. Their design was one of 31 accepted into the competition, and more than 200 teams applied.
They've been working on their craft since February.
"We've been putting in 14-hour days every weekend, building it in my garage," said Wetsch.
Their design is built of metal tubing from a chain-link fence, plywood, aluminum and shrink-wrap. Barnes, a senior architectural engineering major, was responsible for most of the design, along with Keaty.
Wetsch will be the pilot.
"I don't think anyone wanted to fly more than I did," he said. "I want to be right up front. I put so much energy into building it. I want to make sure nothing goes wrong."
He said he has gone cliff-jumping in the past, but he doubts the experience will prepare him for the 30-foot plummet at Flugtag.
Other teammates are happy to keep their feet on the ground.
"It's not something I'd like to do, that's for sure," Marshall said.
Team Vuelo will face stiff competition, including "Air Farce One," whose captain is a Boeing 767 captain with a degree in aeronautical engineering, and last year's winner, "Need for Speed," whose design was inspired by the movie "Top Gun."
Nonetheless, team Vuelo is confident, to say the least.
"We're definitely going to win," Marshall said.
Though he said that flight distance will be their main strength, they won't lax on creativity or showmanship, either.
"You have to be strong in every area to win," he said.
Top prize is a free piloting course or $7,500.
"Piloting lessons would be nice," Wetsch said. "But we're poor college students, and we've put in hundreds of dollars of our own money, so we'd probably take the cash."
Money isn't everything, though.
"It's not the prize that counts," he said. "It's the fact that we built this from scratch, and the pride of knowing our design won."
