Winter weather aborts first test flight of Fossett's highflying

OMARAMA, New Zealand -- Fog, frost and freezing temperatures grounded the first test-flight Saturday of the glider that U.S. investment tycoon Steve Fossett hopes to fly into aviation history.

Fossett and 70-year-old Einar Enevoldson, a former NASA pilot, plan to fly the glider from the snowcapped mountains of southern New Zealand to a record 62,000 feet above the earth's surface.

But the setup team had "a day of frustration, and there may be a couple more to come," said Bill Walker, the project's spokesman at the Omarama glider field on South Island, 415 miles southwest of the capital, Wellington.

Enevoldson, a native of Seattle, was ready to test fly the modified Glaser Dirks DG-505 glider, but "the fog stayed in all day," Walker told The Associated Press.

The gliding altitude record stands at 49,009 feet, set in 1986 above the Sierra Nevada range in California.

Fossett, 58, last week became the only person to make a solo around-the-world balloon flight. During the two-week flight he covered nearly 21,110 miles, landing his "Spirit of Freedom" balloon on an isolated cattle ranch in eastern Australia.

The highest Fossett flew in the balloon was 34,700 feet.

Walker said the glider was ready to go. The pressurized suits Fossett and Enevoldson will wear as they fly into the stratosphere arrived during the day.

Fossett's forward team hopes to make several test flights in the unpowered plane before the adventurer arrives July 21 in his private jet.

"We're basically waiting on the weather now for this first flight," Walker said, but forecasts suggest the glider could be grounded until Tuesday.

"It's winter and there's nothing we can do about that," Walker said.

Fossett is bankrolling the venture, which is named Project Perlan. Perlan is Norwegian for "mother of pearl," and the name given to a wave-shaped cloud that forms in the northern polar stratosphere.

Walker said the glider will be towed by a plane to 3,000 feet to catch soaring winds and updrafts that will hopefully take it into the stratosphere.

The team wants to get beyond the troposphere at 50,000 feet, which has never been done before.

If they succeed in setting a new record, the pair hopes to return next year with a special pressurized glider and fly to the edge of space at more than 100,000 feet.