"It's Very Frustrating"

Steve Fossett, a man whose passions include getting into the Guiness Book of Records as often and as frequently as possible, will have to try again. Sunday, the plucky American aviator called it quits for the season in his attempt to break the world glider altitude record.

"It's frustrating, but this is what is involved when you are doing endeavors which require very specific weather," the tenacious American told The Associated Press from his Omarama flying base on South Island, 415 miles southwest of the capital, Wellington.

Fossett and his copilot, former NASA test pilot Einar Enevoldson failed twice in two days to find the mountain wind they needed to boost their glider above the current record of 49,000 feet.

"The weather probably won't be good enough in the coming week" to push the glider to record-breaking altitudes, Fossett said.

The current sailplane altitude record belongs to American Bob Harris, who was flying over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California in 1986.

Trying To Catch A Wave...

The trick for Fossett and Enevoldson has been to catch a mountain wave until they fly into what's called the Polar Vortex. The mountain wave, which hasn't been all that active lately, has to boost a sailplane to approximately 36,000 feet before a pilot can slip into the vortex and ride to even higher altitudes.

Fossett said it was proving "much more difficult than we thought" to find the right weather conditions.

Fossett and Enevoldson have been flying a German-made glider and wearing NASA space suits. The multimillionaire from Chicago wouldn't put a figure on how much he has spent so far but admitted "It's an expensive project."

FMI: www.fossettchallenge.com