Hang Gliding and Paragliding Volume 44 / Issue 1: January 2014 | Page 25

LEFT The Chicken Whisperer team. Left to right: Nate Herse, Zach Hazen, Laura Shane, Marshal Gusman,
Mike Sherback | photo courtesy Red Bull. BELOW Of the design process, Hazen says, “I build remotecontrolled airplanes, but designing something that actually lifts one off the ground is a huge satisfaction.” |
rendering by Uri Tzarnotzky.

258 Ft.

I

f you haven’t done so already, Google some YouTube
videos titled “man’s early flight attempts.” Rendered in
grainy black-and-white are bold pilots testing all types
of flight machines: wings flapped by pedal bikes, wings
powered by roller skates, men running in early wingsuits.
Some pilots catch lift, some hop along the ground, and some
crash. All of them are endearing testaments to human playfulness, inventiveness, and imagination.
Zach Hazen would fit in well with these early pioneers.
The Palo Alto-based hang glider pilot certainly has the chops:
he’s an aerospace engineer who has been designing and building paper and RC planes since he was a kid. The only problem
is that this 29-year-old sort of missed the era. Zach laments,
“Coming into hang gliding in 2010, things were pretty much
figured out. I missed out on much of the major R and D and
don’t-fly-higher-than-you–are-willing-to-fall phase of free flight.”
While most of us are relieved to have had the kinks worked
out, there is something crazy-seductive about the will-it-fly
suspense of that time period; those pioneers were experiencing
a real adventure. So when Zach’s coworker floated the idea of
entering a DIY flight contest, Hazen saw a chance to release
his inner Michelangelo. They assembled a team and set to work
designing “The Chicken Whisperer”—a homemade glider that
would set a world record at the Red Bull Flugtag contest held in
Long Beach, California.
Flugtag, which literally means “flight day” in
German, is a worldwide contest sponsored by Red Bull. Entrants

launch their DIY aircraft from a 30-foot dock into the water
in front of a crowd of thousands. Design guidelines are strict:
The wingspan can’t exceed 28 feet, the total weight must be less
than 400 pounds., and the work and design window are limited
to just a few months (and dozens of other specs). Entries are
judged on creativity, showmanship, and distance.
Some of the contraptions at Flugtag are entertaining flops,
trussed-up creations that plunk straight off the dock into the
water. But one entry, The Chicken Whisperer, caught air—a
record-setting 258-foot glide, to be exact—and exceeded by 29
feet the previous world record set in Germany in 2012.
Hazen’s team also addressed the showmanship aspect of the
contest with a choreographed dance in chicken costumes, but
that was just a fun aside for Zach: “Distance was everything in
my mind. It’s all I cared about.”

Secrets Of Success
Two crucial design decisions enabled the Chicken Whisperer
to fly so well. One was airspeed. The team ran and launched it
off a moving walkway, using the combined velocity to produce
thrust. The other crucial detail was the wingspan. The Flugtag
rules restricted them to a 28-foot span. Since a longer wingspan
equals better glide, they got around this constraint by adding
“winglets” that helped the wing to act aerodynamically as if it
were about 32 feet.
The other challenges arose from dealing
with Flugtag’s no-harness
rule. The only way a pilot

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