At 23:58 18 January 2020, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Sat, 18 Jan 2020 10:50:34 -0800, Tom BravoMike wrote:

Somehow nobody objects to 'ground controlled' world records -
see the
Perlan project. And it is a sort of an ongoing world competition -
with
great expenses involved. Just a thought..

Record setting is a totally different game. No technology is ruled
out
and it can be individual or a group effort.

I was surprised to see how high Perlan 2 was being towed since
they got
use of the Grob towplane, so looked at the rules for the absolute
gliding
altitude record. It turns out you can tow as high as you like and
the
flight counts as a record provided the glider climbs at least another
5000m (16350 ft) after release.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org


Jim Payne has said that on some days where the stratospheric wave
is working to high altitudes, the lower tropospheric waves are not
working so well. To have to use lots of precious battery life and
oxygen to muddle up through the lower wave system detracted
from the time that they could use to focus on the high altitude
objectives, so they got a tow plane that could reliably get them to
the bottom of the stratospheric system without a hassle. The
additional 5000 meter gain turned out not to be an issue with the
heights they were able to achieve. That whole program is way out
our normal frame of reference and comprehension.

RO