This is an Opportunity that few balloon groups will ever have again. I want to make this a somewhat competition.
As I said in the E-Mail, at first I was going to simply do this flight and grab and hold onto the all time maximum altitude record.

     But I later thought, while cool,  but what a waste of a special balloon!  First some history on how this came to be.

     We have been working with NASA on the very first Wisconsin version of the Rockets For Schools program. Where we developed the payload for the countries very first inland sub-orbital rocket launch right here in Wisconsin. The Rocket was the "Super-Loki"

     What an awesome rocket it was too!  Calculated Maximum Altitude it should have reached would be 340,000 feet!  Yea Baby!

    Soon after that we here at Near Space Sciences NSS were contacted by some retired NASA engineers.  They say they have been following our adventures right from the very start of our first flight. And they felt of all the existing groups at that time we were the best fit for them because we were constantly flying stuff no one else was trying to do yet. A "Push The Envelope" Group.

     They asked us if we would help them test fly some small payloads for them.  I told them of course we can not accept any payment for helping them, and anything we do has to be legal. And they said of course.  These guys were in the chase for the Space X-Prize.

     And they had several prototypes of their Space Plane designs. And wanted to drop them from various altitudes to see how they performed. We developed all the record keeping software to record during the flight G forces and various other parameters they wanted data for. 

It was a blast spending someone elses money! 

     This was when it was legal to drop a glider from altitude. We had the FAA's blessing for the project and several flights. Back then we had an awesome FAA rep for our area. He was so open to anything new we were never turned down for a project.  We even had his blessing and waiver for a Rockoon flight.  It was a large rocket.  I honestly do not remember what altitude it would have finally reached I just remember the massive motors it had.  a single "P" motor surrounded by 4 "O" size motors! Man what a MONSTER!!  We had permission and waiver in hand for that even to happen.  We just never finished the project,  And then 9/11 happened, and FAA reps changed and now the skies are not so freindly anymore to our wild and crazy ideas!

     Anyway,  we started flying their payloads, starting off fairly low, like 10K feet then like 40K  then 80K  etc.  After about a dozen flights of the design they liked the most they wanted to go all out for altitude drop with it. And Then Bought two Giant PE balloons.

     Here is a picture of the last flight we did with this giant PE balloon. Of course it is pretty self explanitory. in the center is laying out the balloon,  at the left is filling it.  and at the right is it leaving with chute and payload attached.