Christian Pondella, Red Bull Photofiles Out of 23 teams and 17,000 text message votes, the half train, half plane '4-4-0 American Flyer' proved to be the hometown favorite, winning People's Choice Award with 33% of the total votes!

By Bob Batz
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The pancakes flew at Flugtag, sort of, but the local entry, dubbed "Mount Jamima," did not win.

The Red Bull Flugtag -- German for "flying day" -- in Baltimore yesterday pitted 23 teams from the region and beyond in a zany competition to see whose homemade, human-powered craft would fly the farthest off the end of a ramp 25 feet above Baltimore Harbor.

	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. Previous story It's a bird ... it's a plane ... it's a pancake!

The Pittsburgh-area entry, piloted by Stacy "Chicky" Cicchitello, of Squirrel Hill, was designed by her and her four teammates to look like a stack of pancakes with a "bacon" hang glider wing. Event safety officials wouldn't allow them to use a harness for a seat, so they just winged it. After their skit, the other members of the Breakfast Club pushed the craft and Ms. Cicchitello off the end of the ramp.

"We just went 10, 15 feet and fell in the water," she said by phone afterwards. "It was a blast!"

She'd been scared of crashing right up to yesterday morning, but once she and her friends were up on the ramp and looking over the crowd, she felt fine. She said her friend Cristy Laudadio splashed into the water with her and said, "I wanted to go in again!"

The team that won first place was "Victims of Soi-cumstance" from Petersburgh, N.Y., which set a new U.S. distance record by sailing 81 feet. The previous U.S. record of 78 feet was set in Cleveland in 2004.

The most creative award went to the steam engine-themed "4-4-0 American Flyer" from Hunt Valley, Md.

The 23 teams that competed were chosen from nearly 300 entries.

The Austrian-based Red Bull company makes a popular energy drink and regularly holds these "free-flight" competitions around the country.

For event results, visit www.redbullflugtagusa.com.