New Altitude Record for Steve Fossett
 

For those interested in gliding

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...ory?id=2373830

See also: http://www.perlanproject.com/

OC619

Fantastic :D !
Could anybody here enlighten me as to the technique of descending a glider from that altitude with all the potential aerodynamic problems.
Thanks.
Oscar.

That's one expensive launch!

I doubt they took off from sea level in the Andes, , but even if they did , Fosset has the money for that I guess !

Congrats nevertheless, my own max alt was almost 25.000 ft over the Pyrennees in a Breguet 904 , a wooden glider many, many years ago, and the only thing I remember is that it was bloody cold....Now you are restricted below FL195 nearly everywhere...

To descend is quite simple, you pull the airbrakes. The time it takes however is another question..
Another technique , when you are in the mountain waves, which they were obviously, is to look for the " down " side of the wave, and there it can go very fast....

ATC Watcher
Because I've never flown an aircraft above FL390, I don't have that sort of experience. I would have thought there would be compressibility problems to look out for in the descent and the thought of simply pulling a glider airbrake at such a height must be problematic indeed! Frightens me anyway...
Oscar

Compressibility is usually more to do with speed than altitude. Below about Mach 0.3 you can disregard it in most circumstances. Gliders fly at much less than that, so I doubt it is a problem.

Wow this is an absolute amazing record, this will be hard to beat! Regarding aerodynamic problems with descending a glider from this altitude, its quite correct what jr says very low speeds not a big issue.

The other way to decend a glider from that height would be to intentionally spin. Depending on the glider he used, the majority are extremely stable in a prolonged spin, also 300-600' per turn would be easily lost.