Fossett 6:38am CT takeoff for another GlobalFlyer record...

This one not as publicized, only reason I know is Jennie and I grew up in Salina and I read the Salina paper each day.

If all went well overnight, by the time most Salina Journal readers read this, pilot Steve Fossett will be aloft in the GlobalFlyer jet aircraft and well east of Salina, aimed at another aviation world record.
The millionaire adventurer announced Monday he would take off at dawn, 6:16 this morning, from Salina Municipal Airport. If all goes as planned, he will land at Salina sometime Friday afternoon or evening, 80 hours after taking off.
His goal is the world closed-course distance record — 24,986.73 miles — set in 1986 by Richard Rutan and Jeana Yeager in the Voyager aircraft. In a closed-course flight, the plane must fly over predetermined points.
This flight comes just weeks after Fossett set a world distance record — 25,766 miles —in the GlobalFlyer. On Feb. 11, he landed at Bournemouth, England — 76 hours, 45 minutes after taking off from Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Fla.
A March 2005 Salina flight gave him the record for the fastest flight around the world (an average of 342 mph).
That Salina flight also made him the first to fly around the world nonstop and unrefueled. It covered nearly 20,000 miles in 67 hours, taking off and landing from Salina Municipal Airport.
The weather’s right
Fossett said today’s takeoff, so soon after his last feat, was to take advantage of favorably cool temperatures and jet streams that will take him around the world.
“The season ends soon,” he said over the lunch hour Monday at the Kansas State University at Salina campus.
“The plane’s in great shape. They’re fueling it now.”
For the most part, the GlobalFlyer has been kept in a hangar at the Salina airport since just before the 2005 flight. K-State at Salina served as the mission control for that record.
After lunch Monday, Fossett and his wife, Peggy, stopped by the hangar where the ground crew was fueling and shining up the aircraft.
While Fossett checked weather maps, Peggy cleaned pairs of his glasses.
Then it was back to Salina Holiday Inn, where he intended to “get as much sleep as I can.”
Fossett, 62, said he intends to rise at 3:30 this morning to “start getting ready.”
Fuel loss a concern
Crew chief Philip Grassa said the GlobalFlyer is up to the task, but as with the previous two flights, fuel loss is a concern. The aircraft lost 3,000 pounds in the 2005 flight and 750 pounds in the February flight.
The crew plans to use a different type of fuel that will get better mileage.
“We won’t have to put as much fuel in because of its density,” Grassa said
While Virgin Atlantic Airways, headed by Sir Richard Branson, bankrolled the first two flights, Fossett’s on his own this time.
“I’ve always got the airplane,” he said. “It’s just a matter of making the flight.”
Fossett’s company, Marathon Racing, owns the experimental jet.
K-State students
Fossett said he wanted to work with K-State at Salina students and staff because on the first two flights, they “did a real good job.”
Fossett will fly roughly over the same points on the map as in his March 2005 flight. But this course contains two doglegs that will give him the necessary distance to set the record, said Patrick Rinearson, a K-State at Salina student working in mission control.
“Those are the same doglegs as we did last year. They just weren’t as pronounced,” he said.
The campus has been quickly equipped to manage the flight since learning of it March 3, said Kristin Magette, K-State at Salina’s coordinator of public and alumni relations.
Monday, red kiosks were set up in the college center lobby. Nearby, behind a curtained area, K-State at Salina flight instructor Brad Amstutz prepared — as he did in 2005 — to mimic Fossett’s feat in a flight simulator.
In a conference room adjacent to the dean’s office on the second floor, mission control was in operation.
“We’re just reviewing the route,” said Nancy Milleret, 22, a senior and a flight instructor at the college. The Web team was assembling to track the flight.
From London, Kevin Stass, who was loaned to the project by Virgin Atlantic, obtained permission to use air space from countries that Fossett will fly over. Stass served as mission control manager for the first two flights in the GlobalFlyer.
“He’s just a phone call away,” Rinearson said.
This flight is not about the fanfare, Magette said, but rather the experience. At least 18 students have direct involvement in the flight.
“It’s been so low-key, this time around. A lot of that is at Steve’s request,” she said. “He wanted to focus on the flight and the students as much as possible.”
There has been some regional media interest, Magette said, but nothing compared with 2005, when attention was worldwide.
There is no public access onto the airfield for the takeoff, Salina Airport Authority executive director Tim Rogers said.
While the public can watch the takeoff and landing, they must follow the rules of public roads.
Pilot Steve Fossett and the GlobalFlyer aircraft lifted off from Salina at exactly 6:38:37 a.m., off on yet a third mission to set a world record.
In comparison to the estimated 8,000 or more people who watched the aircraft take off a year ago on its first record-setting round the world flight, only about 30 people were on hand at the Salina Municipal Airport for this morning’s launch.
Fossett is attempting to set a world record for the longest closed-circuit flight — one that begins and ends in the same place. Fossett is expected to follow roughly the same path as a year ago, with the flight expected to last about 78 hours.

 

Today's Salina Journal update...


As pilot Steve Fossett and his GlobalFlyer reached Africa on Tuesday night in his quest to break another world flight record, things at mission control in Salina were “quiet and boring.”

“Just the way it should be,” said Nancy Milleret, a senior at Kansas State University at Salina. Milleret is serving as co-director of Mission Control for the flight, which began at 6:40 a.m. Tuesday with the takeoff from Salina Municipal Airport.

By 9:30 p.m., the GlobalFlyer had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and was passing over the western Sahara Desert.

“He is on track. Everything seems to be on track,” said Dennis Kuhlman, dean of Kansas State University at Salina’s campus, where students were tracking the flight’s progress.

When Fossett debuted the airplane in Salina with his around-the-world flight in March 2005, the trek attracted worldwide attention and thousands of onlookers.

At daybreak Tuesday, fewer than 20 people — mostly airport personnel, Salina Area Chamber of Commerce officials and media — huddled at the end of the runway to catch just a glimpse of the plane.

“I’m an aviation enthusiast,” said Andrew Smith, an assistant professor of aviation maintenance at K-State at Salina. The school once again is serving as mission control.

“This is history in the making, and I didn’t want to miss it.”

Fossett will try to break the closed-circuit distance record for a flight that begins and ends at the same location. If all goes well, he’ll land in Salina on Friday afternoon or early evening.

In the 2005 record flight, Fossett completed the world’s first, solo nonstop, unrefueled trip around the globe. He returned after 23,000 miles and 67 hours.

Last month, he broke the record for the world’s longest aircraft flight, traveling 26,389 miles in about 76 hours. He took off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and landed in England.

“This is a special man and a special aircraft attempting to achieve another significant aviation milestone,” said Tim Rogers, executive director of the Salina Airport Authority.

Fossett is piloting the GlobalFlyer on roughly the same route as last year’s flight, but he will add several turns to increase the total mileage.

Milleret said the flight should take between 70 and 80 hours, depending on a number of factors, including weather.

The current closed-circuit record of nearly 25,000 miles was set in 1986 by the team Richard Rutan and Jeana Yeager.

About 20 students are heading up operations at Mission Control, which is stationed at the College Center of K-State-Salina.

There seems to be plenty of interest in the flight, said Brian Weber, a junior at K-State-Salina who is in charge of the group of students updating the flight’s progress on the Internet.

The students had received about 90 e-mails from people by Tuesday night and had posted about 70 blogs updating Fossett’s progress on a Web site, http://www.salina.k-state.edu/globalflyer

“We get questions about everything,” Weber said. “We answer as many of the questions as we can.”

This is the third Fossett flight Patrick Rinearson, a senior at the college, has worked on. His responsibilities include watching the jet stream to estimate the length of the flight and keeping track of the plane’s position through the onboard Global Positioning System transmitter, satellite phone and text reporting software.

“It has been a great experience to be able to meet the people we have met, to work with people like Steve Fossett,” said Rinearson, who was running the mission control team for the takeoff.

Milleret said she Tuesday night she had talked with Fossett several times since he took off and he seems to be doing well.

“He hasn’t really talked about his health, but things are going just like they should be,” she said.

 

Today's article...

Salinan Dave Comfort broke the routine in mission control Wednesday when he stopped by to marvel at Steve Fossett’s around-the-world flight.
“I love big happenings,” Comfort said.
What fascinates the retired Salina truck and charter bus driver isn’t the ability of Fossett’s GlobalFlyer jet aircraft to stay aloft for more than 70 hours.
Rather, it’s the 62-year-old Fossett’s ability to stay awake for most of that flight.
“It’s amazing to me he can do it that many hours,” said Comfort, 72. “I can’t stay awake after 7 o’clock.
“I used to get a toothpick and stick it in my leg (to stay alert while driving).”
Fossett took off Tuesday morning from Salina Municipal Airport. If all goes as planned, he’ll land there Friday afternoon or evening after circling the globe.
By 9:30 Central time, Fossett had passed China and was flying over the East China Sea.
When boring is good
On Wednesday afternoon, there was little excitement to report from mission control at Kansas State University at Salina.
“He’s had some warning about turbulence, but it’s all been light,” said mission control co-manager Nancy Milleret, a K-State senior.
Earlier Wednesday, Saudi Arabia closed its air space, requiring special permission for Fossett to fly through, she said, but it caused no problems.
“We’ve kept busy because there are so many position reports (to file) over land,” Milleret said. “For the drama factor, it has been boring, but that’s a good thing.”
By 8 this morning, the GlobalFlyer was expected to be over the Pacific Ocean, about 475 miles east of Japan, she said.
Fossett’s goal is to best the world closed-course distance record — 24,986.73 miles — set in 1986 by Richard Rutan and Jeana Yeager in the Voyager aircraft.
In a closed-course flight, the plane must fly over predetermined points and begin and end at the same location.
The GlobalFlyer’s first flight was in March 2005, when Fossett took off and landed at Salina en route to becoming the first person to fly solo, nonstop and unrefueled around the world. That flight covered 23,000 miles in 67 hours.
In February, he broke the record for the world’s longest aircraft flight, traveling 26,389 miles in 76 hours. That flight took off from Florida and landed in England.
The current flight is expected to take between 70 and 80 hours.
The blog’s a big hit
While the story line has been dull compared to the GlobalFlyer’s first two flights, when the plane lost a lot of fuel, people are paying attention.
A team of 11 K-State students is managing a Web site —www.salina.k-state.edu/globalflyer — that recorded 12,000 hits between early Tuesday morning before the takeoff until Wednesday afternoon.
“The blog has gotten an immense amount of views,” said K-State at Salina spokeswoman Kristin Magette. “We’re getting like 10 to 15 e-mails an hour.”
Electronic messages have arrived from all over the United States, Canada, Israel, Germany and the Czech Republic.
The team is using the blog to provide around-the-clock updates, said Cristina Thurlow, a K-State sophomore.
“We’re getting a lot of questions about the plane, how the fuel is and what the temperature is inside,” she said.
Unlike his flight a year ago, there have been no issues with fuel leaks this time, and the temperature in the cockpit has ranged from 57 to 60 degrees.
“The most challenging question was about the GlobalFlyer’s route versus Voyager’s route,” Thurlow said. “We’re still working on trying to find out.”

 

Landed an hour ago, successful flight and new record...

The GlobalFlyer aircraft touched down in Salina at 9:05 this morning, in front of a crowd of about 250 people. Pilot Steve Fossett, who had been pursuing a new record for longest closed-circuit flight, said he was happy and that the aircraft had performed well.