IThe Highest Ever Week of Soaring

Airbus Perlan Mission IIJackie Payne

Top: It takes a team to accomplish what thePerlan Project is accomplishing. With Stewart'sbeard showing the wind. (Photo by Jackie Payne.)

Above: Five pilots toast attaining 76,000 ft.L-R: Tim Gardner, Morgan Sandercock, AmeVasenden, Jim Payne, Miguel Iturmendi. (Photoby Jackie Payne.)

Above: Front cockpit at 76,000 ft + pressurealtitude. (Photo by Jim Payne.)

22 Soaring • June 2019

GLIDER ALTITUDE:

VERTICAL SPEED:

GLIDER SPEED:

GLIDER HEADING:

268°

6 kts

WIND SPEED:

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WIND DIRECTION:

282°

AIR TANK O2 TANK BATTERY

MAX ALTITUDE: 76071 ft

FLIGHT TIME: 03:19:57

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Virtual cockpit screenshot.

Perlan Project was founded tosafely explore stratospheric waves.

August 26 through September 2,2018

was the big payoff with an 8 day vali-dation that the southern Polar Vortexdoes create soarable lift to above76,000 ft. It takes specific weather con-ditions, a pressurized sailplane, and anawesome onsite team of 20 volunteersto make it happen. Here s the story.

BackgroundMany years ago, Perlan Project's

founder, Einar Enevoldson, hypoth-esized that there was wave lift in thestratosphere above the tropopause.In 2006, Einar and Steve Fossettproved it with the Perlan 1, a modi-fied DG-505, during Perlan MissionI. During descent from their recordflight to 50,722 ft, they decided thatthey should build a pressurized sail-plane known as Perlan 2. Perlan is theScandinavian word for pearl - refer-encing pearlescent high altitude clouds.The building of Perlan 2 was a big ef-fort that was documented in Dr. DanJohnson's article published in the May2019 issue of Soaring magazine.

The Perlan Project has conductedthree campaigns in El Calafate, Ar-gentina. Shipping Perlan 2 to remoteArgentine Patagonia with the neces-sary equipment and required officialpermissions made my prior experi-ence of logistics for five World Soar-

ing Championships and four scoutingtrips to Patagonia (before the Perlan2) look like child's play.

We were helped by many supportersin Argentina. This included shippingcompanies, soaring and aero clubs,glider pilots, government agencies, andlodging providers. There were many,many more supporters who helpedPerlan Project. I tried to include all ofthem in my blogs from Argentina. Seewww.PerlanProject.org/blogs.

TeamAirbus Perlan Mission II maintained

20 volunteers to fully staff the complexneeds to safely soar in the stratosphere.In 2018, we expanded the onsite team

Perlan CapComm, L-R: Ed Warnock, LarsBenschy Tim Gardner. (Photo by Jackie Payne.)

to include professional weathermenand a medical doctor. Our bilingualgovernment relations coordinator,Sandra Sandercock, and Argentinelogistics coordinator, Tago De Pietro,both worked to get us what we neededand to stay out of trouble. Rebreathersneeded mounting and testing beforeeach flight and cleaning post flight.Each pilot pulls additional responsi-bilities. We have professional flight testengineers. Our CapComm (capsulecommunications) ran the entire timeof every flight. They were analyzing theweather real time and analyzing thevibration excitation system to look forsigns of flutter. They kept a close watchon all life support telemetry.

We had several glider knowledgeableground crew for oxygen, pressuriza-tion, launch, and recovery. There weretwo interns who assisted with pre-flight responsibilities like cameras andcockpit computers, science equipment,cubesats, Virtual Cockpit, launch, andrecovery. The Perlan Project CEO EdWarnock and purser Linda Warnockkept everything flowing smoothly andpaid for. And I managed logistics andground ops, and wrote blogs.

2018 UpgradesThe team made two huge improve-

ments before the 2018 campaign.The pilots did not like the way the

hatches fit the cockpit openings. So arecent Lockheed retiree, Greg Scates,a composites guru, built a pair of newhatches. Mike Malis supported withthe engineering calculations. Thosehatches were textbook perfect for allthe high altitude 2018 flights.

The second gamechanger was get-ting a Grob G-520 Egrett for a tow-plane. Normal glider towplanes couldonly get to about 12,000 ft in an hourof fighting headwinds and rotor. Afterdiscussion amongst the team consider-ing several more powerful options, Jimsaid in January 2018, "What we reallyneed is Einar's Egrett." (Our founderEinar was a test pilot for the Egrett inEurope.) As Miguel Iturmendi com-mented, "You must be very carefulwhat you ask for in Perlan. Someoneis likely to make it happen." By Mayof 2018, Mike Malis had helped theEgrett owner install a tow reel systemand get it signed off. Jim and Miguel,with Tim Gardner and Mike Malis'support, did some test tows in a Grob103 to verify the suitability and proce-dures for launching behind the Egrett.With the high tow line tension, flyingtow was relatively easy as the sailplanewanted to follow the Egrett, and itwas difficult to induce slack line.

The Egrett is a towplane on steroids.In El Calafate (cold, 665 ft MSL), thePerlan 2 was 1,200 ft AGL by the end

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of the 8,400 ft runway. That climb ratemeant the Perlan 2 was quickly abovethe rotor turbulence. With a flat ratedengine, the Egrett had a steady 1,000+ft per minute climb to 28,000 ft, andthen kept climbing until well over40,000 ft.

On August 10, the team made a towto 12,000 ft to check the Egrett andPerlan 2. All went well and the nexttow was to 40,000 ft MSL. There wasno wave forecast in mid-August whichwas perfect for these test flights. Thefirst time above 25,000 ft, Jim said onthe radio, "The towplane is conning."He meant the towplane had a con-trail. Jim anticipated window frostingbefore the first high tow. He askedMike Malis to make a clear plenum to1) capture the air near the eyeball win-dow for better solar heating and 2) re-strict access of the moisture from pilotbodies to those super cold windows.Jim's idea and Mike's fabrication waseminently successful.

August 26 - 60,705 Feet GPSFrom the first Egrett tow until Au-

gust 26, the team was incredibly busyimplementing all the upgrades andgetting experience with high altitudetows. Dan Gudgel analyzed the strato-spheric weather, and we sent multipleweather balloons up to verify forecasts.We were watching for the right con-ditions to develop. We needed enoughopen sky to stay clear of clouds fromthe surface to the tropopause.Then weneeded wave to develop from the ener-gy of the Polar Night (winter) Jet, akaPolar Vortex. On August 24 and 25,we almost had the weather we want-ed, but not quite. The team had earlygroup breakfasts but the weather justdidn't break in our favor. On Sunday,August 26, Jim said, "It's a go!" and wecontinued the preflight regimen. Jimand Morgan Sandercock were readyto make this happen! The launch wasflawless, but the stratospheric wavewas weak. It was not where the fore-casts said it would be.The 5.6 hr flightproved that high tows allowed time toexplore and search for stratospheric

wave. The plenums helped preventicing. The tire was flat upon landing,but Jim expected that after our 2017experience. It was very windy on theground upon landing. We brought asecond truck with people to the run-way to walk the wing during the longtrip back to the hangar. El CalafateTower and the Bomberos (fire de-partment) provided lights and sirensto punctuate a new world record! Thehigh point was 60,705 ft GPS alti-tude (62,600 ft pressure altitude) for anew world record. More details are athttp://perlanproject.org/blog/world-record-claim-above-60000-fee t-august-26-2018.

August 28 - 63,809 Feet GPSOnly 2 days later, the weather again

lined up with our desires. This timeMiguel Iturmendi would be flying withJim. Tim and Darlene Gann from Air-bus America (our biggest sponsors) hadjust arrived to watch how Airbus PerlanMission II operated from remote Pa-tagonia. Again we had an early teambreakfast, but to our dismay when wearrived at dawn at the hangar there wasno electricity! The entire airport was"dark." The decision was if we couldget a generator to power our essentialequipment in CapComm, we could stilllaunch. So Tago De Pietro worked yetanother miracle when he got a genera-tor loaned to us. It was a bit of a scram-ble, but I kept running the checklist.

As we pushed out of the ramp, Iasked for the team to stand down whileI ran the checklist again Wherewas the backup iPad which runs theartificial horizon (Garmin GDL-393D)? It was still on the dead char-ger .... The front cockpit was alreadysealed after the pressurization test. Wequickly inserted it into the rear cock-pit and Miguel handed it to Jim in thefront. Safety backup was restored. TheiPad is only used if the glider losesbattery and all other instrumentation.But it's the "get home" backup. By theway, ground power was restored some-time while on tow. CapComm had togo back to 220 V configurations.

This time the forecast position of thewave lift was closer to reality. Lift wasbarely there from surface to 30,000 ft,extremely weak at the tropopause, andimproving at 55,000 ft. Perlan 2 wasdesigned to explore the stratosphericwaves. Our wing is optimized for60,000 ft. No other normal sailplanewith a wing that performs well from0 to 20,000 ft would be able to climboff tow that day. And as altitude in-creases, so does true airspeed. Corre-spondingly, the true sink rate increasesin the same ratio. At FL600, the trueairspeed is 3.3 times indicated andminimum sink is 330 ft per minute. Solift of 400 ft per minute meant evenPerlan could barely hang on at 60,000ft. We needed a lot more lift, and onthat day the stratospheric wave deliv-ered exactly that.

Altitudes can be a bit confusingwith Perlan 2. Pressure altitude (set-ting the altimeter to 29.92) is usedglobally in Class A airspace so all air-craft are using the same reference forheight measurement. So Perlan needsstandard pressure altitude on its in-struments. The "standard" day was cre-ated for operations at the latitude ofEdwards Air Force Base. El Calafateis a loooong way from that "standard."The International Gliding Commis-sion and the Federation AeronautiqueInternationale a few years ago requiredGPS altitude to be used for soaring re-cords above 15,000 m (about 49,000ft). We have consistently found withour weather balloons and flights thatGPS altitude in the vicinity of ElCalafate is about 2,000 ft lower thanpressure altitude. That's why you maysee photos of cockpit pressure altim-eters (65,600+ ft) that differ from theofficial record of 63,809 ft GPS alti-tude. http://perlanproject.org/blog/second-world-record-claim-2-days

Sept 2-74,334 Feet GPSThe team was energized with two

high altitude soaring flights in the bag.But the weather kept cranking. BothSeptember 1 and 2 looked very prom-ising. But the surface conditions of

WeatherExtreme wave forecast during FL760flight.

SkySite wave forecast.

September 1 were less desirable. Thereis no crosswind runway at El Cala-fate and strong surface winds 60° offcenterline are a real challenge for longwinged ships. I loved the Egrett (108ft wingspan) tow pilot's response toJim. Arne said, "I can handle anythingyou can handle."Jim opted to wait forSeptember 2.

During the night, we had hard rainand even small hail. We didn't want awet runway, and we saw rooster tailsof water as the early commercial traf-fic took off. Miguel checked the actualrunway conditions and said it was al-most dry. So we restarted the preflightregimen. Again the forecast tropo-pause lift band was weak, but at least itwas forecast to exist according to WaltRogers. But as Jim and Tim Gardnertowed behind the Egrett, they report-ed no lift through 35,000 ft.

They finally got a "nibble" above40,000 ft. Then the lift improved nice-ly. The Perlan 2 got off tow at about42,000 ft and quickly climbed to65,000 ft and performed more flutter

excitation tests.We want thedampening (re-duction of vibra-tions) to matchthe models pro-duced at our2015 groundvibration test-ing made in SanDiego at ATA.We record the test results in the cock-pit and then download them via te-lemetry to CapComm.The file is thenemailed to ATA with a 5 minute anal-ysis time. We also have Lars Bensch,a Flight Test Engineer, in CapCommwho can immediately look at the datafor any anomalies. If flutter ever wereto develop at these altitudes and trueairspeeds, it would not be good.

Jim and Tim surpassed the previoushigh point and kept climbing. Theystopped at 74,334 ft GPS altitude(76,124 ft pressure altitude). That washigher than the U-2 spy plane s max re-cord altitude while using a big engine.So the pressurized sailplane Perlan 2has the record of the highest level flight(not zoom) of a subsonic, manned air-craft. Jim calculated the max speed onthis flight was Mach 0.46 with a trueairspeed of 4.5 times indicated. Thiswas a 5.1 hr flight - an hour on tow,3 hours climbing, and an hour to getdown, http://perlanproject.org/blog/perlan-2-soars-above-76000 ft

Post Record FlightsAfter these flights, we needed to test

faster speeds to prepare for the 2019assault on 90,000 ft. On September12, 2018, Jim and Miguel towed to45,000 ft to make the highest ever tow(unofficial record). The design limitfor airspeed on Perlan 2 is M 0.62.Our flight envelope stops at 90,000 ft.There is a point (called "coffin corner")where stall speed and VNF meet. Thataltitude is about 96,000 ft for Perlan2 - straight and level. In wave flying,there are always gentle maneuvers tostay in the line of lift. We don't dostraight and level like a jet with an

Egrett contrail from Perlan tail camera.

engine. That's why we plan to "only"climb to 90,000 ft if stratospheric wavepermits. Yes, we have two aircraft-sized parachutes for emergencies, butwe would rather not use them, http://perlanproject.org/blog/fmal-flight-argentina-2018-highest-ever-tow

The FutureAirbus Perlan Mission II will be in

El Calafate from the end of July untillate September 2019. If you want to"ride along," there are several ways tobe notified. You can follow our Twit-ter account to be notified when we areflying, then watch the Perlan VirtualCockpit with nearly real time datalike altitude, moving map, climb rate,winds, heading, remaining battery,oxygen, and air percentage. We usetweets for live commentary from Cap-Comm. Over 12,000 folks watchedthe highest glider flight ever on Sep-tember 2, Labor Day Sunday. You canenter your (USA) phone number fora text message to check the VirtualCockpit. Or you can enter your emailaddress on our website to be notifiedof flight. We also have active Facebookand Instagram accounts. Perlan SoarsHigh!

76,000ft, tail camera.

www.ssa.org • June 2019 • Souring