Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Stacy "Chicky" Ciccitello sits atop "Mount Jamima," a flying contraption made to resemble a stack of pancakes, at an industrial facility near Latrobe on Tuesday. At right, Richard Danforth and Bill McClintic, gesturing, discuss piloting techniques.

By Bob Batz Jr., Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

	Slideshow: Stacy "Chicky" Cicchitello and her teammates prepare "Mount Jamima" for the Flugtag competition at a warehouse in Latrobe. Editor's note: Click image to launch slideshow in pop-up window.

Orville Wright: first heavier-than-air machine flight. Charles Lindbergh: first solo nonstop transatlantic flight. Amelia Earhart: first female solo transatlantic flight.

Stacy "Chicky" Cicchitello aims to soar into that pantheon of aviation heroes tomorrow by becoming the first person to pilot a stack of flying pancakes.

Or, at least, to not die trying.

"I'm just going to have to get over my fear of crashing and just do it," says the courageous Ms. Cicchitello, 25, of Squirrel Hill.

She is to be at the controls, such as they are, of "Mount Jamima," the human-powered possibly flying machine she and four local teammates jury-rigged for the Red Bull Flugtag at Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

Red Bull, young people may know, is a caffeinated energy drink. Flugtag (pronounced FLOOG-tog), German people may know, is "flying day."

Since the first Flugtag in 1991 in Vienna, the Austrian company that makes the drink has held more than 35 of these zany "freeflight" competitions.

They're more like free-fall competitions, as most of the craft tend to plummet off the elevated flight deck straight into the body of water below.

The longest U.S. flight was a mere 78 feet, set in Cleveland in 2004. The record of 195 feet was set in Austria in 2000.

In Baltimore this weekend, 23 teams will push their entries -- no bigger than 30 feet wide and no heavier than 450 pounds, including pilot -- off a 100-foot ramp 25 feet above the water.

Teams are judged on not only flight distance, mercifully, but also creativity and showmanship. And there's a "People's Choice Award" -- automatic entry in the next Flugtag. Hence the wild range of entries, including a whopper Oscar Meyer Wiener and freakish firefighter's helmet, and the attendant costumes for the two-minute prelaunch skits. The "Firkin Flyer," hailing from Morgantown, W.Va., is to resemble a firkin, or barrel of beer. One of its team members is Nathan Herrold, brewmaster at West Virginia Brewing Co.

There are several other Pennsylvania teams, including "Safe Busters" from Bloomsburg Area High School, which won in New York in 2003 and placed second in Cleveland the following year. Most teams are from this region -- Maryland, New York, Virginia, Washington, D.C. -- but there's also "Jump the Shark" from Atlanta, "Wet T-shirt" from Cullman, Ala., and the inflatable "WASP" from Sofia, Bulgaria. They'll compete for the first-place prize of a pilot's training course (worth $7,500), a second-place prize of skydiving lessons ($3,000) and a third-place prize of paraglide lessons ($1,500), plus bragging rights (priceless).

Teams had to submit a sketch and specifications of their craft, their skit and themselves. Those chosen were winnowed from nearly 300 entries.

Ms. Cicchitello entered on a lark with her friend Cristy Laudadio, who, like her, is a high-energy Red Bull distributor. In mid-August, when they learned they were in, they were stoked. As Ms. Laudadio posted on their blog, www.mountjamima.blogspot.com, "Not only will we win Red Bull Flugtag, we will bring our innovative flying pancake design to change the well-being of society. If we all had our own flying pancakes, don't you think a 'bad mood' would be extinct?"

They cooked up pancakes because they love to breakfast with their buddies after late nights of listening to their favorite band, Western Pennsylvania's Grinning Mob. (Its song "Chopper" is its skit soundtrack.)

The pair and the three teammates they recruited will tell you, pancakes do fly, because they've tossed them at one another.

Ligonier teammate Richard Danforth recounts how the "obvious aerodynamic difficulties" of a stack of pancakes -- one wants to call them flapjacks -- were overcome at one of their meals together with the inspiration of forming a wing from strips of bacon.

But the Breakfast Club, as they call themselves, had to get semi-serious to build Mount Jamima. They used hang glider parts including a wing (painted with the bacon meat and fat) resting atop the three truck-tire inner tube "pancakes" that are completely decorated with dripping syrup and decked out with colorfully costumed inflatable sex dolls.

"This is a great way to get together, be silly and think of wacky ideas," said Ms. Laudadio as she sat amid spray paint bottles, bubble wrap and duct tape and the giant silver fork she will be wearing.

The contraption came together -- over many late nights and many beers -- in the hangar-like plastics factory in Loyalhanna run by teammate "Uncle" Bill McClintic, 64, who will dress as syrup icon Aunt Jemima. "It's been fun," he said as they jammed to complete the airship before Wednesday night's bon voyage party, "but frankly, when I got into this, I didn't know it was going to be so many hours."

He even went with Ms. Cicchitello to Virginia to practice hang gliding, but alas, she was rained out. Their testing was limited to pushing their pancakes inside the factory because an actual flight probably would destroy the rig, if not the pilot. So going into tomorrow, her total hours of human-powered flying time is, um, zero.

She's undaunted. Or, at least, not that daunted. As she shouted to her team, wearing one of the blow-up doll's sunglasses as goggle-like protection from the wind blasting from the giant blower they used to test if their pancakes are indeed lighter than air, "If I start to go down, I'm bailing!"

All the entries must pass safety inspections in Baltimore this morning. If Mount Jamima is cleared for takeoff, Ms. Cicchitello will take the helm, wearing a helmet and a life jacket and a leotard painted so she looks like syrup. She'll also wear a square yellow cushion, but not for protection.

It's a pat on her back, of butter.

If you go to the free Flugtag, which opens a half-hour before the 1 p.m. first flight, you can also visit the Maryland Science Center exhibit "Built by Amateurs: The Quest for Human-Powered Flight." For more on the event, plus flying games and more, visit www.redbullflugtagusa.com.