Teams from around the country hope to take flight today at Chicago’s North Avenue Beach. The Flugtag competition returns to Chicago after a 5 year break.

Flugtag is German for flying day. Contestants launch their homemade flying machines off a 25 foot platform and hope to catch as much air as possible before crashing into Lake Michigan. Naresh Nair of team Smurf Cactus competed in the last Chicago Flugtag, but his team did more swimming than flying. He says this time his airborne Smurf house has a chance to win.

NAIR: It’s a giant mushroom design. So if you can picture this giant mushroom house where the top, the lid of the mushroom is going to fall off and the bottom will drop and the top will go and sail down into the water.

Nair says the craft is about $5,000 worth of PVC piping and tarp. And it’s all human powered, or as Nair says, smurf powered. This afternoon teams will try to break the 155 foot US Flugtag distance record.