south of Patagonia, in the Southern Hemisphere soon afterwards in summer of 2016. Jim Payne (USA) and Morgan Sandercock (Australia) set a new altitude record of 15,902 metres (52,172 feet) from Comandante Armando Tola International Airport in El Calafate, Argentina. The flight took place on 3 September 2017 The 2018 season was again based at El Calafate. The project acquired a Grob G 520 Egrett turboprop aircraft for use as a tow plane. This enabled Perlan II to be towed to This seems to be the highest glider tow, as records are not registered. On 26 August 2018 Jim Payne and Morgan Sandercock reached an altitude of . This was followed by with Jim Payne and Miguel Iturmendi on 28 August 2018. On 2 September 2018, Jim Payne and Tim Gardner reached an altitude of , surpassing the attained by Jerry Hoyt on 17 April 1989 in a Lockheed U-2: the highest manned heavier than air subsonic flight. The Perlan 2 could fly to if conditions allow, higher than the manned level flight altitude record of the SR-71 Blackbird at . Previous records were measured with pressure altitude; high altitude soaring records now require GPS data. Notes References External links Perlan Project's official website NASA Tech Brief DRC-00-08: Soaring to 100,000 ft on Stratospheric Mountain Waves Research organizations in the United States Aviation pioneers