Red Bull Gives You Wings?

 The Red Bull Paper Wings Qualifiers were held in Australia from March 11 to April 2. They took place in three locations in Canberra this year between 18-30 March. The first event was held on 18 March at the University of Canberra. The Second event was held on 26 March at Woden CIT campus and the final event was held at ADFA on 30 March. Everyone who participated in the paper wings qualifiers got a complementary 8 pack of Red Bull.

The competition has three disciplines

– Longest Distance

– Longest Airtime

– Aerobatics

Each of the three disciplines were judged under the Paper Aircraft Association (PAA) and the Guinness Book of World Records. The winner of each discipline was rewarded with 20,000 Qantas points. The points offer participants Qantas reward options such as flights, travel insurance and the Qantas Store.

Murray Enders who was the Master of Ceremonies (MC) at the events described what participants were judged on. “There are very strict rules, for Longest Distance and Longest Airtime you have to have both your feet planted on the ground. For the Longest Airtime it was from the moment it left your hand to the moment it hit anything was the time and with Longest Distance it had to land in the runway.”

“In Aerobatics the participants are judged on their planes design on their planes acrobatic feat and also the participants style when they throw the plane.” he said.

Matthew Stewart who was the photographer and videographer at the events described his experience.

“They mostly wanted me to cover the aerobatics discipline, because it’s the only discipline that’s not judged off time or distance. It’s based off opinion, they got scored by three judges on a scale of 1 to 10 in Aerobatics.” he said.

This year at ADFA participant Jack Smith broke the Australian record for Longest Airtime and is headed to Austria to participate at the world finals.