Name: Matty B.

Hometown: Cow Pasture, Mississippi

Role: Height Measuring Device, Instability Engineer

Bio: Competition rules say that the kart and the craft have to be under 8 feet. When we can't find the tape measure, we turn to Matt. Although Matt isn't 8 feet tall, he is a tall glass of water. Old lore says his 'fro accounts for 25% of his height. Somewhere underneath it all is his noggin, where he cracks the DaVinci Code of aeronautics and channels them into our craft.

TEAM

Name: Dwin

Hometown: Mactown, VA

Role: Creativity Engineering Officer, Stuntman, Bus Driver

Bio: Edwin is the one behind the wheel driving the bus. He navigates and plots the team's maneuvers through the design, build, and test phases. Edwin is so committed to leading the team to success, that he vows that he will go down with the ship. Literally. He’s going to jump off the platform with it.

Name: Holly

Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA (Holla)

Role: Black Magic (Aero) Artist

Bio: The team's Amelia Earhart. She is one of the team's aero designers. Without her, there wouldn't be much of a wing. When Red Bull announced Flugtag 2K17 was going to be in Pittsburgh, she didn't think twice about throwing down for the hometown.

Name: KP T.

Hometown: Across The Pond

Role: Gameday Pilot, Senior Flight Engineer

Bio: KP is an avid skydiver. He has no problem jumping out of planes at 15K feet and falling at terminal velocity. As our token flight day pilot, he is "down" with piloting the aircraft, but has lightly expressed concerns with "flying" from 22 feet. #TrustIssues with the design engineers? Perhaps, but good thing he's one too.

Name: Lio

Hometown: B'More

Role: Tight End, Power Forward, Mid Fielder

Bio: Elliot is the all-around team player - the jack of all trades. He's your TE in football, utility player in baseball, and a stretch 4 on the court. All great teams have players like this who keep it all together. Elliot can do it all - kart design, aero design, mechanical design. Except piloting - we're not letting him anywhere near the cockpit.

Name: Jay P.

Hometown: 37.2710° N, 79.9414° W

Role: Sky Falling Specialist

Bio: While the competition does not call for piloting experience, JP exceeds this criterion. He lives, breathes, and eats airplanes. Pizzle is an expert in glider flying – turning falling out of the sky into an art. With this experience, it’s easy to call on JP as to the ins and outs of powerless flight.

Name: Gibbz

Hometown: Portola Valley, CA

Role: #Moneybags

Bio: Laura keeps the team in check, in-line, and on course. She does our sanity checks, making sure the team doesn’t over-think or complicate things. When Laura heard about Flugtag, she was totally on board with pushing a flying craft off a 22-foot deck. Being a pilot herself, Laura liked the idea of having a hand in the shenanigans.

Name: Dewey G.

Hometown: North Cackalacky

Role: Electrical Guy

Bio: Dewey is our electrical guy. All electrical questions are deferred to him. And about the whole electrical thing, yeeeah there aren’t any on this aircraft. Seeking to find his niche, the team elected him as the strength and conditioning coach. Dewey’s goal is to have the crew looking beefy come game day. He's had the team eating his homemade beef jerky for weeks. #Gainz

Name: Andrew O.

Hometown: 'Merica

Role: B.S. Engineer

Bio: By day, Andrew does software – writing lines of a different breed of black magic. As we learned in Dewey’s bio, there is no electricity, thus no software. So for Flugtag, Andrew is our B.S. (brainstorm) engineer. His academic studies and experience gives us a “different” perspective when brainstorming. While the rest of us are trying to get creative by thinking outside of the box, Andrew is already there outside of it – he just has to think.

Name: K Pyne

Hometown: NOVA

Role: Breaking Stuff Guy

Bio: Kyle is one of the team’s “breaking stuff” guys. It’s not that he’s clumsy and breaks stuff, rather he makes sure the things (not) break. Aka he’s a structures engineer. Fun fact about Kyle: he lip synced Aaron Carter’s billboard hit “That’s How I Beat Shaq”

Name: Antonio

Hometown: Italia

Role: Resident Philosopher

Bio: Tony is our resident philosopher. He theorizes, hypothesizes, and conceptualizes. He “-izes” all things Flugtag. Tony has proven that he is a man wiser beyond his years. Also, he happens to know a thing or two about structures.

Name: Oldie O.

Hometown: 703

Role: Visionary Consultant

Bio: James is not your typical engineer. In fact, he's not really an engineer at all. But his vast social network and way with words drive the team's marketing efforts. His job is to add a little spice to the gumbo and get the people talking about the miracle that is about the happen on August 5th.