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Flugtag world record designers tell their secrets

3,759 views · Published 12 November 2013 · 1:14:05 · Indexed 12 November 2026

Channel: wcolby · 2013 · Education

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The Chicken Whisperers, Bob Parks, designer & Zach Hazen the test pilot, speak to a group of aeronautical engineers about winning the world record for distance in the 2013 Flugtag in Long beach California. The Symposium was given in mountain view California.

Summary
The vast majority of contraptions in the Red Bull Flugtag competition find creative ways to leap off the pier and plunge into the water. However, an occasional design seems to just float across the waters. Such was the case on September 21, when a Mountain View-based team, the Chicken Whisperers, set a Flugtag world record of 258 feet.

It helps that they are a team of engineers devoted to a new generation of aircraft design. But in this case, they do it in such an entertaining way. Aside from the frivolity, the lead designers of the record setting glider offer insight into the design and testing of their aircraft.

About the Speakers
Bob Parks is a design engineer at an aerospace start-up in Mountain View. He was a co-designer of the Chicken Whisperers glider for Red Bull Flugtag Long Beach 2013. The team won the event and set new Flugtag world record for distance.

Prior to that, he was chief designer for Aurora Flight Sciences, working on the concept and configuration design on nearly all indigenous Aurora aircraft since 2002. These include the LH2 Orion, Boeing LH2 HALE, demonstrators for the ARES Mars airplane, Excaliber hybrid, VTOL UAV, Odysseus Z wing solar powered aircraft, GoldenEye 100, 50, and 80/OAVII VTOL ducted fan aircraft, DARPA submersible aircraft (manned and UAV/USV), and DARPA Transformer flying car.

In the 1980s, he was a designer for a couple of very different aircraft. One was the MIT Daedalus human-powered aircraft. The other was the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. Robert (Bob) Parks is an Associate Fellow of AIAA.

Zach Hazen is a senior test engineer at an aerospace start-up in Mountain View. He was a co-designer and test pilot for the Chicken Whisperers glider that set the Red Bull Flugtag distance record. Prior to that, he was a structural loads engineer at Cessna Aircraft, and a teaching assistant at Witchita State, where he helped students design, build, and test fly RC models. His masters project on soaring UAVs cooperating to find thermals. Before that, he was at University of Colorado, and working on a UAV to return payloads from trips to near space via weather balloons. Zach Hazen is an advanced rated hang glider pilot.

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