David W. Smith/Daily News Brothers Brandon (from left), Blake and Brody Vincent work with friend Luke Simmons to move their Rocky Top Rocket on Thursday in Muhlenberg County. Teaming under the banner “Greasy Brothers Inc.,” they’ll compete in today’s Red Bull Flugtag event in Nashville.

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GREENVILLE - For weeks, customers at Vincent Auto Solutions have stopped short inside the garage to stare at the creation stashed along one wall.

It's a 25-foot-long, 200-pound banjo on wheels, but that's not the strange part: Today it will serve as a launch pad for 29-year-old Brandon Vincent of Bowling Green, who'll be clinging for dear life to a hang-glider shaped like a mountaintop while Brody and Blake Vincent - two of his three brothers - and family friends Luke Simmons and Brad Moore push the entire creation off a ramp into the Cumberland River in Nashville.

Welcome to Red Bull Flugtag 2007, which team Greasy Brothers Inc. hope to win with their “Rocky Top Rocket.”

For the unfamiliar, Red Bull Flugtag (“flying day” in German) events are held around the globe every year, beginning in 1991 in Vienna, Austria. At Nashville's event, competitors - the sanity of whom may rightly be debated - navigate human-powered crafts off a 30-foot ramp, at which point the bulk of the craft crashes into the river below while the pilot uses a hang-glider to soar through the air.

Hopefully, anyway.

“I'm not that (nervous),” said Brody, 26, as the team gathered Thursday in their father's Muhlenberg County garage. “I think Brandon is starting to get that way because he's the one who has to pilot this thing. He's the crash-test dummy.”

Even if teams can't keep their crafts from tumbling directly into the river, they still have a chance to win the People's Choice Award if enough spectators send text messages in their support. That's where “Rocky Top” comes in - it's one of Tennessee's state songs, so the team is hoping to garner some Volunteer State support. But competition for the Rocky Top Rocket may be stiff: Other craft designs include the Walrus of Mass Destruction, a flying Rubik's Cube piloted by Virginia Tech students and a John Deere tractor.

The whole thing began earlier this year, when Brody saw an advertisement on television for Flugtag and decided to round up a team. The Vincent brothers have always gotten along well - plus they're all “young guys still willing to get hurt,” Brody said - so Brandon and 24-year-old Blake were shoo-ins. From there, they recruited Simmons, 27, of Evansville, Ind. and Moore, 22, a student at Western Kentucky University.

“Brody just kind of told me that I was going to do it,” Moore laughed. “He called me and was like, ‘We're doing Red Bull Flugtag and you're on our team.' ”

Once the application was submitted, Brody never thought he'd hear back.

“Really, once we got in it was just kind of like, ‘Well, we have to do this now, we made it in,' ” he said. “I'll probably get blamed for it if something goes wrong 'cause it was my idea to do it.”

The team spent the last two months building their craft - the Gibson banjo represents Kentucky's bluegrass heritage, while the mountain top glider fits the “Rocky Top” theme - out of Styrofoam, fiberglass and thin wood veneer in their father's garage, attracting stares and comments from their neighbors, said Brody, who, along with Blake, lives in Muhlenberg County.

“We've been so lucky because we couldn't have built it if we didn't have the warehouse space,” Brody said. “He owns a trucking company, so it's instant transportation for us.”

The team made it to Nashville on Friday morning, Moore said, where they were scheduled to sit in on team meetings and attend a barbecue Friday night. Flights begin at 1 p.m. today at Riverfront Park in Nashville.

But before they push the Rocket off the ramp, the team has a special skit to perform. Playing to the Kentucky hillbilly stereotype, they plan to wear fake beards and overalls with no shirts, and carry a moonshine jug and washboard. Some of the Greasy Brothers - so named because they grew up around their dad's shop - will also play a mandolin and banjo donated by the Gibson corporation.

Then, as “Rocky Top” plays over the loudspeakers, Brandon will take his place - he needs a ladder to climb atop the banjo - and the other four teammates will grab a handle and start running.

“The more we get into it, the more we discover it's a brand-new adventure for us,” said Brandon, who has a pilot's license. “We're not using FAA-certified equipment.”

The prizes include a pilot's training course, skydiving lessons and paragliding lessons, although the team says if they win, they'll ask for the cash equivalent - after all, there's a huge pile of receipts just waiting to be totaled once they get up the courage to do so.

“Honestly, we don't know (the total),” Brandon said. “We're kind of scared to add it up.”

- For more information, visit www.redbullflugtagusa.com.