East German border troops were instructed to prevent defection to West Germany by all means, including lethal force (Schießbefehl; "order to fire").

Wagner initially considered building a submarine to escape via the Baltic Sea, but doubted his skill in this area, and so turned to his strength: aircraft design.

He designed it with an enclosed cockpit and contra-rotating twin propellers in pusher configuration powered by two 19 hp engines taken from a pair of motorbikes.

[3] Although the necessary materials (plywood, balsa wood, aluminium, plexiglass and polyester were in short supply in East Germany, the family was able to procure them from various hobby shops, which they visited in a wide area around Dresden to prevent drawing attention to themselves.

Wagner's mother-in-law, who lived in the West, was brought in on the plan and smuggled in glass, silk, bearings, and saw blades for cutting the aluminium sheets.

The instruments needed for flight and navigation (altimeter, airspeed indicator and compass) were either built by Wagner, smuggled from the West, or purchased on the black market.

Wagner tested all the various elements of the aircraft in order to ensure it would successfully fly, including stress-testing the wing-fuselage connection with the aid of jacks and springs, showing that it could carry at least 2.4 times the intended weight.

Wagner intended to take off from an abandoned coal mine in Nonnewitz near Leipzig, as it was a good distance away from any public roads and buildings.

His family would then board, and he would fly south, following the highway (keeping low so as to stay below the radar), and after a journey of around 90 kilometres (an estimated half hour flight), land in a field near Hof, West Germany.

[7] Three years after Wagner's arrest, in 1984, Ivo Zdarsky, future founder of Ivoprop, successfully escaped communist Czechoslovakia to Austria in a homemade powered hang glider, which used an engine from a Trabant.