Fear of flying cross country

[126Driver]

I would like to fly more cross country flights but have to admit I
usually come up with a list of excuses for not going on any particular
day. The weather is never good enough, or I have a dinner engagement,
or my battery seems low, or something. Some of this is a general
concern about personal injury, but I think I am also just afraid of
landing out and having to put up with the inconvenience of a retrieve
and getting criticism from other pilots in my club. (I did some damage
to my glider on a land out last year and I have lost a lot of
confidence.) I thought I would get over this, but have not so far.
Has anybody else been through a period like this, and if so, how did
you work it out?

thanks,

Steve

[BB]

On Jun 27, 2:08 pm, 126Driver > wrote:
> I would like to fly more cross country flights but have to admit I
> usually come up with a list of excuses for not going on any particular
> day. The weather is never good enough, or I have a dinner engagement,
> or my battery seems low, or something. Some of this is a general
> concern about personal injury, but I think I am also just afraid of
> landing out and having to put up with the inconvenience of a retrieve
> and getting criticism from other pilots in my club. (I did some damage
> to my glider on a land out last year and I have lost a lot of
> confidence.) I thought I would get over this, but have not so far.
> Has anybody else been through a period like this, and if so, how did
> you work it out?
>

Some suggestions:

xc dual. This depends where you are; in my club (Chicago) it's as
simple as signing up the duo discus, grabbing an instructor or xc
pilot and going. Travel to a site with a good xc instruction program
will be well worth the substantial amount of money involved.

Welcome to xc flying. It's all about diagnosing your problems,
figuring out the solution, then practicing it. Clearly, you've figured
out that excessive fear due to your last landout is the problem. Now,
go to work on making decisions using the facts, not feelings about it.
It will take determined practice to recognize illogical fear (as
distinguished from perfectly logical fear) and ignoring it. "Getting
back on the horse" is important. Habituation is the answer. All of us
have had to wrestle with this kind of thing.

Why was there damage? Something else obviously went wrong that needs
fixing. When you fix that, you'll get confidence again. Did you leave
field choice until too late? Again, some dual is a good idea. Just
because everybody else learned xc alone with the map in one hand and
terror in the heart is no reason to keep doing it this way!

There is no such thing as cross-country flying, there is only local
flying to different landing sponts. Plan your cross-country flights so
you know you're always in safe landing zone, then say out loud "I'm
local to x", committing to landing at x if the need arises. Drive the
route and pick specific fields if that's what it takes so you are
really logically comfortable with landing.

If your club really will give you criticism for a well-flown and
planned landout on a reasonable cross-country day, change clubs! This
is not only unhelpful, it's unsafe. Lots of accidents have happened
because people stretched a glide back to the airport in fear of
getting yelled at. If you don't land out occasionally, (especially in
a 126!) you're not trying.

Don't wait forever for "really good days." You only get better at it
if you fly xc anytime you can reliably stay up.

John Cochrane BB

[Nyal Williams]

Keep doing it! Be careful with planning, scout for
land out places near your airport while flying and
then visit them by car to critique your choices and
to fix in your mind where they are, and extend the
distance gradually. Figure out where you went wrong
with your accident; it is probably further back in
your decision path than you might be aware. Forget
the criticism; they weren't there. Most everyone has
twenty-twenty hindsight. For the most part, these
critics are not the ones who can give you foresight,
but a good instructor can.

I have been in your shoes.



At 19:12 27 June 2007, 126driver wrote:
>I would like to fly more cross country flights but
>have to admit I
>usually come up with a list of excuses for not going
>on any particular
>day. The weather is never good enough, or I have a
>dinner engagement,
>or my battery seems low, or something. Some of this
>is a general
>concern about personal injury, but I think I am also
>just afraid of
>landing out and having to put up with the inconvenience
>of a retrieve
>and getting criticism from other pilots in my club.
>(I did some damage
>to my glider on a land out last year and I have lost
>a lot of
>confidence.) I thought I would get over this, but
>have not so far.
>Has anybody else been through a period like this, and
>if so, how did
>you work it out?
>
>thanks,
>
>Steve
>
>

[5Z]

Everything John said... :)

Plan to land out on your next flight. Find a suitable field from the
ground, walk it, measure it, then go flying. At the end of the
(perhaps local) flight, land there. Of course, you'll need to line up
a crew, prepare the trailer, etc.

I flew a 1-26, long, long ago and I remember that every flight was
likely to end up with a landing not exactly where I had planned. That
was a big part of the fun of flying the ship - all the friends needed
to support me and share the ship so we could all crew for each other.

Work on your spot landing technique. If you can't get stopped EVERY
time within 5' of a predetermined spot that you choose prior to
turning final, if flying at the home airport, then you need some dual
instruction to determine why. At our club we had a requirement to
land over a barrier, then get stopped within 500' prior to taking the
1-26 XC. The barrier was a pair of 16' poles with a flag banner
stretched between them. The length was about 100' and a weak link was
placed in the flag line so it would break easily if snagged by the
glider.

Here's a YouTube video posted recently of a 1-26 landing at a model
airplane field that shows a well executed landing in a small field:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g7lUZ506Zw

-Tom

[Marc Ramsey]

5Z wrote:
> Work on your spot landing technique. If you can't get stopped EVERY
> time within 5' of a predetermined spot that you choose prior to
> turning final, if flying at the home airport, then you need some dual
> instruction to determine why.

I've heard other people suggest this, and I have to disagree. In my
opinion, what is important is consistently and controllably touching
down within 5 or 10 feet of a predetermined spot (plus having some
energy to spare, if you see something you don't like on final). During
an actual off field landing there are all kinds of ways one can stop,
but the chances of damage are minimized if you take advantage of as much
of the available length as you can.

> At our club we had a requirement to
> land over a barrier, then get stopped within 500' prior to taking the
> 1-26 XC.

A reasonable test, if properly organized, but not something to do on a
day to day basis...

Marc

[Papa3]

Steve,

John Cochrane hit many of the key points. I'll just add a few
thoughts of my own.

Over the years, I've run many ground schools on XC Soaring. On
average 6-8 folks show up. A year later, I'll follow up with
them. Fully 75% (say 6 of the 8 in the above example) would hem
and haw before admitting that they still haven't gone out of gliding
range of the home airport. There's always a long list of excuses -
time, weather, availability of equipment, availability of crew etc.
(sound familiar?). So, you're not alone.

On the first day of class, I would ask people to privately write down
3 reasons they haven't gone XC. Invariably the following would be at
the top of the list:

1. Fear of landing out.
2. Fear of getting lost.
3. Confidence in my soaring skills (thermalling in particular, but
also including choosing the right clouds, final gllides, etc).

Item 2 is much less of an issue with GPS being ubiquitous. Yes, you
still should know how to read a map and maintain situational
awareness, but it's clearly not the same issue it was even 10 years
ago.

Item 3 is easy to practice at the home field. A combination of dual
instruction, comparison in gaggles, and pure, focused practice is the
key.

That leaves us with item 1. You can practice many of the aspects
of landing out right at home. Try landing on different parts of the
airfield with real (or imagined) obstacles to make it intersting. See
if you can routinely land your 1-26 in say 700 feet after crossing a
50 foot imaginary tree (imaginary trees are much more forgiving then
real ones when you're practicing).

Pick local fields from the air, including the approach you would fly,
where you would touch down, etc. Then, drive out and look it over.
Was the field as big as you thought? Did you judge the slope, crop,
obstacles, etc. correctly? Do this over and over until you have a
good track record of choosing safe fields.

I would also add that the fear of landing out is not the least bit
irrational. I've told myself and students that you can assume that
1 out of every 10 field landings will result in some sort of minor
damage to the glider. That means torn gear doors (if you got 'em),
busted tailwheels, belly scrathes and dings, etc. You can just tell
your club mates that you skewed the odds in your favor for the next
9 !

Seriously, if the club or operation where you fly isn't solidy behind
you, then you're at the wrong site. In our club, we have a wonderful
group of active XC pilots. You know you're in the right group for XC
when:

- People ask "how far did you go", not "how long were you up?"
- There's an annual award for the best retrieve.
- People lavish attention on trailers, even if the aircraft
themselves are ratty.
- They make you do your silver distance in a 1-26.

Anyway, there's really no simple answer. I'd say that the confidence
comes when you know you've got all of the building blocks in place.
Couple that with a supportive team around you, and it's really a lot
of fun.

Erik Mann
LS8-18 P3

126Driver wrote:
> I would like to fly more cross country flights but have to admit I
> usually come up with a list of excuses for not going on any particular
> day. The weather is never good enough, or I have a dinner engagement,
> or my battery seems low, or something. Some of this is a general
> concern about personal injury, but I think I am also just afraid of
> landing out and having to put up with the inconvenience of a retrieve
> and getting criticism from other pilots in my club. (I did some damage
> to my glider on a land out last year and I have lost a lot of
> confidence.) I thought I would get over this, but have not so far.
> Has anybody else been through a period like this, and if so, how did
> you work it out?
>
> thanks,
>
> Steve

[Bill Daniels]

You already have lots of good advice. I'll add this.

Thermalling is the key. Any fool can glide between thermals. If you can
thernal well, you can almost always get high enough to glide somewhere
better than where you are. So, how do you get better at thermalling? Well,
I've noticed that everybone gets a lot better at it once they are out of
gliding range of home.

Bill Daniels

[126Driver]

Thanks you all for your detailed and thoughtful responses. It is nice
to see that my issues are understood and perhaps were even experienced
by many others in the soaring community. (Seems like we don't talk
about this much.) I will definitely incorporate all of your collective
insight and suggestions into my cross country endeavors going
forward. I'm actually looking forward to the remainder of the soaring
season!

Thanks again,

Steve

[ContestID67]

First, just by the act of asking these questions, I can see that you
want to succeed. As someone who remember clearly only a few years ago
having the same concerns you have, here are my suggestions.

1) John mentioned flying dual. Maybe a two place ship is not
available to you for XC. I started some of my best early XC by flying
alongside of someone else. I asked him to help me out and to play
follow the leader. There are a few things that help here. One, if he
is staying up, I know that I could also. He will help find those
elusive thermals. Actually flying abreast on a blue day you can help
each other. If he is better than you, then he will wait around for
you if he gets ahead. Its less boring too.

2) Landing out. As someone told me once, it isn't *IF* you will land
out, it is *WHEN* will you land out. I remember thinking that landing
out means that I am not any good. This was reenforced by some club
members who berated those that landed out. They probably don't cross
country. Actually I now know that landing out is, to a certain
extent, a badge of honor as it means I am pushing the XC envelope.
Also, getting low and making a save is a great confidence builder. My
home club is now actively helping pilots for XC. What's the first
thing that they teach? How to land out! Heck, I now announce that I
am flying to xxx, and I may land out. There seems to be those that
are willing to retrieve. I am lucky flying near Chicago because there
are so many small airports and private strips to land at.

3) Tasks - Moffat writes about flying tasks on weak days within a
short distance your home airport. Don't just hover over the field, go
somewhere! Fly somewhere even if it is only a few miles away --
maybe juuuuuuust beyond final glide. BTW, fly the first leg upwind
-- it's easier to get home that way.

4) Equipment - Take you mind off navigation by flying with GPS. That
frees you to find that lift!!

Good luck, John "67"

[[email protected]]

all suggestions have been excellent.

I fly similar performance. my first landout in the Cherokee resulted
in ripped fabric on the nose. Oh Well. I did two dual XC flights
before I flew solo XC and both of those involved landouts (In A
Lark!!!). I think that that was critical in teaching me a lot about
field selection and all the fun stuff that happens after you have
given up. That is where it truly gets interesting. This eased my
fears and made landing out basically a non event for me. ive done all
my cross countries using pilotage and its worked fine, but I have a
lot of experience instructing in power around the state so im familiar
with the area. the nice thing about a 1-26 is you just cant go fast
enough to get lost really. and of course you should always be
prepared to land out cause you and I fly gliders that go more down
than forward. what part of the country are you in? that is
important. out here in the flatland midwest you can land anywhere in
the spring and fall. its perfect. in many other areas thats just not
the case.

club dynamics can be an interesting factor. my club is fairly neutral
as far as XC flying goes. XC flying in club gliders is allowed as
long as you prep the trailer. its fairly rare that club gliders are
taken on XCs though. however i have found a lot of interest in most
of the local flyers in how well i did on my XC flights. they seem to
fly XC vicariously through me. I think I have motivated a few of them
to spread out a little further, and that is great.

I would recommend, as said above, to fly every flight XC. just keep a
nice landable field below you, be very conservative. dont go for max
speed or distance, just go. and have fun! because it is.

Tony

[Jack]

Marc Ramsey wrote:

>> At our club we had a requirement to
>> land over a barrier, then get stopped within 500' prior to taking the
>> 1-26 XC.
>
> A reasonable test, if properly organized, but not something to do on a
> day to day basis.


Why not?

I think we should do something similar, informally, on every
landing, where doing so does not conflict with other operational
requirements. If we don't set a standard of some sort for every
takeoff, every flight, every landing--how do we know what we can do,
whether we're making any progress, or even maintaining our skills?
After all, not having confidence in our abilities results in a
reluctance to fly XC.

Your suggestion that we focus on the touchdown point is very
important, but it is just part of the challenge. Getting stopped at
a certain point helps us to determine just how good a job we've done
of choosing the _right_ touchdown point, assessing the braking
available on a given surface, and the effects of slope and
vegetation on our roll-out distance.

Spot landings are fun and useful, but we need to know, and be able
to do, much more.


Jack

[Marc Ramsey[_2_]]

Jack wrote:
> Marc Ramsey wrote:
>
>>> At our club we had a requirement to
>>> land over a barrier, then get stopped within 500' prior to taking the
>>> 1-26 XC.
>>
>> A reasonable test, if properly organized, but not something to do on a
>> day to day basis.
>
>
> Why not?

Because I've seen what happens when a newbie misjudges the distance it
will take to stop, and touches down a bit too late. This may be all
well and good if one has a large grass field, but not so nice if you're
operating on a runway with a staging area at the end, and other gliders
waiting to takeoff and land.

At Williams Soaring Center there are lines painted on the runway about
20 feet apart, far enough down the runway that an ASK-21 will just about
run out of momentum without braking by the time when it reaches the
staging area. A lot of us aim at a touchdown on a selected line every
flight, it's great practice, and there's plenty of margin for error.
Once you've executed a proper touchdown, how quickly you stop is a
mostly a function of how much damage you're willing to do to the glider...

Marc

[CindyASK]

On Jun 27, 10:19 pm, Marc Ramsey > wrote:
> Jack wrote:
> > Marc Ramsey wrote:
>
> >>> At our club we had a requirement to
> >>> land over a barrier, then get stopped within 500' prior to taking the
> >>> 1-26 XC.
> >> A reasonable test, if properly organized, but not something to do on a
> >> day to day basis.
> > Why not?
>
> Because I've seen what happens when a newbie misjudges the distance it
> will take to stop, and touches down a bit too late. This may be all
> well and good if one has a large grass field,

Wow.
This is the nicest thread, with the nicest people and contributions I
have seen on ras
in quite a while. Bravo guys, and I will pitch in a little also.

There is a difference in land out and
land - away - from - home.
A lot of the mental wigglies, and background peer noise can go away,
if you are willing to make and live with above-glide-slope discipline
to known
airports (or aeroretrievable places depending on your region of the
country).
Airport sized places reduce risk, and social complications.
Get an air tow home. For 50km flights, it may be cheaper than the
friends dinner's
and trailer and gas time.

My first XC flights were in 1-26s (not even mine), and my current XC
flights are
also mostly not in my own airframes. (Thank you to many folks.) I want
to take
extremely good care of the glider(s). I have many land aways. I have
few
landouts, as those are very risky to gliders in CA/NV territories.
All my landouts
have been on places I have walked with my sneakers before I flew
there.
(This might affect my access to pretty airframes?)

Do I stretch things? Not beyond glide discipline with adjustment for
wind
and margin for inefficiency for me and that day's glider. In 30
years, I've only been
seriously challenged on margin twice, and I go places a bunch, usually
in a
twin with a student.

I teach that you need to S.S.T.O.P.P. soaring and plan a good landing
from a
reasonable distance above a known landing spot.

Size(span) - how many lanes of traffic wide do you need? 1-26 about
four lanes, 15Mtr six lanes.
Size(length) - how many times long is it versus its width? That will
get you a pretty
good handle on sizes.

Slope - is there any? Prioritize uphill versus upwind for that
landing.

Texture - airport textures are good. Fields - color, pattern, shadows
tell us more info.
You may have to pick with furrows over into wind or slope.

Obstacles - as you make two or three complete circles around this
place.....
you have the opportunity to observe drift, and be on differing
radials for lighting
changes on fences, wires, trees, furrows, etc.

Point into Wind if you can.
Positive Points - think happy things about this place now that you
have inspected
it well and have a nice Place Picked to Touch, and to Halt.

The others told you, you need to know course and landable spots before
you
leave home. XC dual is always a good thing. Fly a route in an
airplane, and take
the edge off, or practice field evals from the plane, and go compare
data from the ground
after that route flight.

You need to be able to land accurately, always.
This means knowing your factors for adjustment of flare distance and
taxi distance.
(Which are: Approach Speed, Approach Configuration (%spoilers),
headwind component,
slope, texture and braking ability of the machine.)

Yes, spot land the heck out of every landing. Pick your flaring place,
know your distance
in flare to a touch spot, and know your braking distance for your
touchdown attitude
and configuration. And for Mark and all of us, yeah, don't scare or
threaten
the home 'drome gnomes while you do this practice.

When you know you are in command of landings, and have a tug pilot
ready for a
breather away from local duty, and have a decent day and your
composure, leaving
won't be so bad. You'll have a great story to tell us in July.

Fly safely,

Cindy B

[anonymous]

I found that my biggest barrier was the thought of the retrieve
inconvenience of my friends. Talk it over with your friends. If there's
no cross country culture at your field, ask your wife, your spouse, a
non gliding friend whether she'd be willing to stand by for a possible
retrieve that evening. This will cost you a dinner, and of course you
will have to compensate by volunteering for something else. I found that
once the retrieve problem was not causing any bad feelings anymore, I
went cross country much more aggessively.

[Ian]

On 27 Jun, 20:08, 126Driver > wrote:

> Some of this is a general
> concern about personal injury, but I think I am also just afraid of
> landing out and having to put up with the inconvenience of a retrieve
> and getting criticism from other pilots in my club.

I've met a few pilots like that. They are normally the ones who have
bought themselves 40+:1 in glass and use it to waddle round 100km
triangles on good days. Deep down they feel rather ashamed of
themselves, and they criticize landouts because they know that they
normally arise from a bit of adventurousness in flying which they lack
themselves.

But enough psychology. Rather than rely on a club retrieve, why not
form a mutual retrieve pact with a pal? One of you sets off on an
adventure and the other agrees to stay local-ish: you swap roles each
flying day.

The need to get back can really dampen the spirits. Why not have a
good old-fashioned downwind dash one day? Your retrieve crew can
follow you on the ground, and it's surprising just how far you can
get.

Finally, try to avoid routes which go over, or very near airfields.
It's OK and reassuring to pass within gliding range from time to time,
but runways suck gliders towards them. Well known fact.

Ian

[Mike the Strike]

> Finally, try to avoid routes which go over, or very near airfields.
> It's OK and reassuring to pass within gliding range from time to time,
> but runways suck gliders towards them. Well known fact.
>
> Ian

You obviously haven't flown much in the US southwest. Over much of our
terrain, you can either land at an airfield or crash into cactus or
tree-strewn mountains. Landable strips are an essential part of our
database.

Landing at a decent strip also has the advantage of getting an aero-
retrieve. More expensive, but less inconvenient.

I overcame my trepidation by flying over tiger country with a mentor
and then with a group of cross-country pilots who have a mutual
retrieve policy (steak dinner and lots of beer!)

Mike

Mike

[Ian]

On 28 Jun, 16:11, Mike the Strike > wrote:
> > Finally, try to avoid routes which go over, or very near airfields.
> > It's OK and reassuring to pass within gliding range from time to time,
> > but runways suck gliders towards them. Well known fact.

> You obviously haven't flown much in the US southwest. Over much of our
> terrain, you can either land at an airfield or crash into cactus or
> tree-strewn mountains. Landable strips are an essential part of our
> database.

In such places it is obviously sensible to keep landing places in
mind, but I still think it's a mistake to fly directly over them.
There is a strange magnetic attraction at work ...

Ian

[Martin Gregorie[_1_]]

ContestID67 wrote:
>
> 4) Equipment - Take you mind off navigation by flying with GPS. That
> frees you to find that lift!!
>
An addition to that.

This applies if you carry a GPS and GPS-aware vario (one that can
compute final glides to a GPS way point. When you're local soaring make
sure both are running and that the GPS has your home field set as its
current way point. You can use the information these provide to push out
toward the glide angle limit and get a good feeling for being well away
from your home field, gain familiarity with the instruments and get to
know the wider local area. You'll also get a good feeling for how far
your glider can go from various heights. Just make sure you have a
conservative safety height set in the vario and have taken the trouble
to match its settings to your glider's polar.

I have an SDI C4 and a GPS II+ in my Std Libelle. If I'm soaring locally
rather than going XC this is the way I operate. Besides, doing this is a
lot more interesting that flapping round just outside the circuit.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

[Martin Gregorie[_1_]]

anonymous wrote:
> I found that my biggest barrier was the thought of the retrieve
> inconvenience of my friends. Talk it over with your friends. If there's
> no cross country culture at your field, ask your wife, your spouse, a
> non gliding friend whether she'd be willing to stand by for a possible
> retrieve that evening. This will cost you a dinner, and of course you
> will have to compensate by volunteering for something else. I found that
> once the retrieve problem was not causing any bad feelings anymore, I
> went cross country much more aggessively.
>
Or do the same as often happens in my club. Its common for a few pilots
to set off on the same task after having agreed to a mutual retrieve:
those who get back go and collect anybody who didn't make it.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

[Bob Whelan]

CindyASK wrote:
> On Jun 27, 10:19 pm, Marc Ramsey > wrote:
>
>>Jack wrote:
>>
>>>Marc Ramsey wrote:
>>
>>>>>At our club we had a requirement to
>>>>>land over a barrier, then get stopped within 500' prior to taking the
>>>>>1-26 XC.
>>>>
>>>>A reasonable test, if properly organized, but not something to do on a
>>>>day to day basis.
>>>
>>>Why not?
>>
>>Because I've seen what happens when a newbie misjudges the distance it
>>will take to stop, and touches down a bit too late. This may be all
>>well and good if one has a large grass field,
>
>
> Wow.
> This is the nicest thread, with the nicest people and contributions I
> have seen on ras
> in quite a while. Bravo guys, and I will pitch in a little also.
>
> There is a difference in land out and
> land - away - from - home.
> A lot of the mental wigglies, and background peer noise can go away,
> if you are willing to make and live with above-glide-slope discipline
> to known
> airports (or aeroretrievable places depending on your region of the
> country).
> Airport sized places reduce risk, and social complications.
> Get an air tow home. For 50km flights, it may be cheaper than the
> friends dinner's
> and trailer and gas time.
>
> My first XC flights were in 1-26s (not even mine), and my current XC
> flights are
> also mostly not in my own airframes. (Thank you to many folks.) I want
> to take
> extremely good care of the glider(s). I have many land aways. I have
> few
> landouts, as those are very risky to gliders in CA/NV territories.
> All my landouts
> have been on places I have walked with my sneakers before I flew
> there.
> (This might affect my access to pretty airframes?)
>
> Do I stretch things? Not beyond glide discipline with adjustment for
> wind
> and margin for inefficiency for me and that day's glider. In 30
> years, I've only been
> seriously challenged on margin twice, and I go places a bunch, usually
> in a
> twin with a student.
>
> I teach that you need to S.S.T.O.P.P. soaring and plan a good landing
> from a
> reasonable distance above a known landing spot.
>
> Size(span) - how many lanes of traffic wide do you need? 1-26 about
> four lanes, 15Mtr six lanes.
> Size(length) - how many times long is it versus its width? That will
> get you a pretty
> good handle on sizes.
>
> Slope - is there any? Prioritize uphill versus upwind for that
> landing.
>
> Texture - airport textures are good. Fields - color, pattern, shadows
> tell us more info.
> You may have to pick with furrows over into wind or slope.
>
> Obstacles - as you make two or three complete circles around this
> place.....
> you have the opportunity to observe drift, and be on differing
> radials for lighting
> changes on fences, wires, trees, furrows, etc.
>
> Point into Wind if you can.
> Positive Points - think happy things about this place now that you
> have inspected
> it well and have a nice Place Picked to Touch, and to Halt.
>
> The others told you, you need to know course and landable spots before
> you
> leave home. XC dual is always a good thing. Fly a route in an
> airplane, and take
> the edge off, or practice field evals from the plane, and go compare
> data from the ground
> after that route flight.
>
> You need to be able to land accurately, always.
> This means knowing your factors for adjustment of flare distance and
> taxi distance.
> (Which are: Approach Speed, Approach Configuration (%spoilers),
> headwind component,
> slope, texture and braking ability of the machine.)
>
> Yes, spot land the heck out of every landing. Pick your flaring place,
> know your distance
> in flare to a touch spot, and know your braking distance for your
> touchdown attitude
> and configuration. And for Mark and all of us, yeah, don't scare or
> threaten
> the home 'drome gnomes while you do this practice.
>
> When you know you are in command of landings, and have a tug pilot
> ready for a
> breather away from local duty, and have a decent day and your
> composure, leaving
> won't be so bad. You'll have a great story to tell us in July.
>
> Fly safely,
>
> Cindy B
>
>
Congrats on being sufficiently motivated to ask your original question,
and for having the gumption to do it. (Hmmm...methinks that sort of
goes for the very act of soaring, too!) As you know by now, a person
really CAN obtain useful information related to actual soaring on RAS!

My most general feedback is: "What everyone else has already said."

The only off-field-landing damage I've done (so far) was to
dirt-clod-poke-a-hole in my 1-26's fabric adjacent the skid on my
3rd-ever off-field landing. It came from choosing a nice,
chocolatey-brown, plowed field to land in. Key word 'plowed.' As in it
hadn't been disced or harrowed or raked or otherwise further tended to.
On short final it dawned on me the biggest clod in the field was about
to arrive. 1-26's safely let you make such beginner mistakes at minimal
cost and personal risk.

I'm probably dumber than Cindy, and have used a shorter
pre-off-field-landing checklist for decades. It's S*O*A*R.

S - Surface
O - Obstructions
A - Approach
R - Rectangle

If you implement each of these checks/actions sequentially and in an
un-rushed fashion, your OFL should be no less sweaty-palmed than a
routine landing at your home field. (Of course, your palms WILL sweat
more, but they won't *need* to! :-) )

SURFACE - I prioritize my OFL choices into 3 groups.
Priority 1 fields are those with *known* smooth, low-risk, essentially
level surfaces, of sufficient width for my wings and length for my
rollout. Essentially, these are recently harrowed agricultural fields,
whose furrows are not a factor in landing direction.

Priority 2 fields are everything not Priority 1 or Priority 3. You'll
note this includes airports, incidentally, as many have hungry lights
lusting for glider wingtips. (So I'm a cautious soaring coward. It
bothers me not one bit.) Priority 2 fields are the ones I work really,
REALLY hard in assessing, as they're the ones with the most unknowns I
have to identify and assess before willingly risking my ship by landing
on them.

Priority 3 fields are those any horizontal arrival may likely result in
considerable damage to plane and possibly self. They're 'no-brainers'
for me. I simply won't land on them, and give them no further thought
or attention once identifying and discarding them. Western prairie, for
example. Scary stuff IMHO..but not every pilot of retractable glass i
know agrees with me. Point is, YOU get to identify and set the risk
parameters within which you're willing to soar. Better, IMHO, to be an
OFL wimp than kicking yourself over a busted gear or tailboom from that
yucca you didn't notice, or the prairie dog hole/mound, or some
soil-encrusted rock that did its worst.

Books can be - and have been - written about how to assess and choose
field surfaces. Attempting conciseness on RAS is probably futile, so I
won't try. But if you choose a poor surface, and still implement the
rest of your checks perfectly, you run the risk of breaking the glider,
so surface analysis is crucial to any XC soaring pilot, regardless of
skill level or L/D.

OBSTRUCTIONS - As used in this checklist these are anything sticking up
from my chosen field, OR, things not there (as in dirt-free-zones of
critter holes). If you've chosen a good surface, identified any/all
potential obstructions and worked backward to identify the pattern
required to get you onto your field while avoiding the obstructions, the
next thing (still working backwards) is...

APPROACH - Here you're looking for "airborne gotchas!" NOT directly on
your field, e.g. bordering fences/trees/powerlines, hillocks, etc. The
"gotchas" aren't generally airborne, but if you are when one gets you,
it won't be pretty. This is an area I've found many beginners don't
genuinely appreciate. A starting/useful rule-of-thumb is you need to
multiply your necessary field length by 10 times the height of any
"gotcha." So that nice, comfy, 1,000' long disced field you're
eyeballing, suddenly becomes 50% shorter because of those 50' trees
surrounding it. Aren't you happy you're flying a 1-26, now?

RECTANGLE - Make every OFL pattern a full rectangle, for only by so
doing can you with (nearly 100%) certainty identify wind strength and
direction. (You DO want to land into the wind, don't you?) Also, it
gives you the best perspective(s) of your selected field you can get
short of walking it beforehand.

Two final things to ponder.
One - though you'll probably want to have successfully completed your
"SOA" assessments by 'some comfortable altitude' (in my case several
thousand feet, wry chuckle), human eyeballs are incapable of so doing.
What you'll conclude only through direct experience is you can
(generally) accurately conclude the "S" part by the time you're down to
~2k agl, the smaller "O" bits won't be satisfactorily identifiable until
the 1k-2k agl level, and you might in fact be assessing them still on
short final...depending... The "A" bits are (for me, anyway) generally
easy to assess, while still well above crosswind height. But you've
gotta be *checking* for them, or bad things can easily happen...
The general point is, if you do your worrying, fretting, assessing,
and decision-making above pattern height, by the time you're in the
pattern, you can relax and be reasonably certain you're about to make as
no-sweat a landing as you're used to making on your home airport.

Two - Paradoxically, THE most difficult time of day to assess fields
from aloft is when the soaring is likely to be best, i.e. when the sun
is high overhead. Why? Little help from shadows in assessing things
like field slopes, plant/obstruction heights, etc. So, delaying your
landing until as late as possible has a whole host of benefits. Yee hah!

In closing, if you can't consistently fly approaches to a pre-selected
landing 'spot' you need to lengthen your field choices accordingly.
IMHO, it's much more important to be able to fly a well coordinated and
speed-consistent pattern than it is to be able to arrive 'at a spot.'
The idea is to arrive horizontally at some pre-selected speed (i.e.
energy level), above a Priority One surface, heading upwind. Everything
else is secondary. Once you've attained consistency IN the pattern,
'the spot' eventually falls out in the wash.

Most of all...have FUN!!!

Regards,
Bob - wimpy - W.

[Bill Daniels]

As usual, Bob does a great job of writing up a soaring issue. In this case
selecting landing fields. However, I would like to add something.

It's what I would call "Pre-Selection" of fields in the months and weeks
before a cross country flight. When doing this, I'm looking for an "A-List"
of "known-safe" landable fields. These are fields that I have walked while
assessing all hazards. Often these are airports where I may pace off the
distance between edge lights to assure myself that the wingtip will clear.
I also check for road access and cell phone reception. Many public airports
don't make the "A-List". An "A-list" field has no hazards at all.

On any road trip where I have the time, I'll make a list of interesting
locations to look at. Any rural or private strip is on the list. I'll be
particularly interested in 'gaps' between A-List fields. I note the
Lat/Long and carry a GPS handheld to make finding the strip easier. I may
have printed out a aerial photo of the field. If a private strip makes the
"A-List", I'll contact the owner and explain my interest. These have always
been pleasant encounters which, I hope, will make it easier if another pilot
lands there.

I also keep an eye out for roads and farm fields that I'll put on my
"B-List". An example is a 2-mile stretch of gravel road in Colorado's San
Luis Valley - I call it "Desperation Road". It has no fences, reflector
posts or overhead wires and it's about 10" above grade with shallow bar
ditches and 6" sage bush beyond that. Desperation Road, like all "B-List"
fields, is landable but not without hazards.

So far about 50% of the strips on turnpoint database lists are absolutely
unlandable. About 20% of the strips on Sectionals no longer exist or are so
decrepit that they are unlandable. Be careful with maps.

Armed with my A-List and GPS navigation, I can always fly within gliding
range of a safe field. That takes a lot of sweat out of cross country.

Bill Daniels


"Bob Whelan" > wrote in message
...
> CindyASK wrote:
>> On Jun 27, 10:19 pm, Marc Ramsey > wrote:
>>
>>>Jack wrote:
>>>
>>>>Marc Ramsey wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>At our club we had a requirement to
>>>>>>land over a barrier, then get stopped within 500' prior to taking the
>>>>>>1-26 XC.
>>>>>
>>>>>A reasonable test, if properly organized, but not something to do on a
>>>>>day to day basis.
>>>>
>>>>Why not?
>>>
>>>Because I've seen what happens when a newbie misjudges the distance it
>>>will take to stop, and touches down a bit too late. This may be all
>>>well and good if one has a large grass field,
>>
>>
>> Wow.
>> This is the nicest thread, with the nicest people and contributions I
>> have seen on ras
>> in quite a while. Bravo guys, and I will pitch in a little also.
>>
>> There is a difference in land out and
>> land - away - from - home.
>> A lot of the mental wigglies, and background peer noise can go away,
>> if you are willing to make and live with above-glide-slope discipline
>> to known
>> airports (or aeroretrievable places depending on your region of the
>> country).
>> Airport sized places reduce risk, and social complications.
>> Get an air tow home. For 50km flights, it may be cheaper than the
>> friends dinner's
>> and trailer and gas time.
>>
>> My first XC flights were in 1-26s (not even mine), and my current XC
>> flights are
>> also mostly not in my own airframes. (Thank you to many folks.) I want
>> to take
>> extremely good care of the glider(s). I have many land aways. I have
>> few
>> landouts, as those are very risky to gliders in CA/NV territories.
>> All my landouts
>> have been on places I have walked with my sneakers before I flew
>> there.
>> (This might affect my access to pretty airframes?)
>>
>> Do I stretch things? Not beyond glide discipline with adjustment for
>> wind
>> and margin for inefficiency for me and that day's glider. In 30
>> years, I've only been
>> seriously challenged on margin twice, and I go places a bunch, usually
>> in a
>> twin with a student.
>>
>> I teach that you need to S.S.T.O.P.P. soaring and plan a good landing
>> from a
>> reasonable distance above a known landing spot.
>>
>> Size(span) - how many lanes of traffic wide do you need? 1-26 about
>> four lanes, 15Mtr six lanes.
>> Size(length) - how many times long is it versus its width? That will
>> get you a pretty
>> good handle on sizes.
>>
>> Slope - is there any? Prioritize uphill versus upwind for that
>> landing.
>>
>> Texture - airport textures are good. Fields - color, pattern, shadows
>> tell us more info.
>> You may have to pick with furrows over into wind or slope.
>>
>> Obstacles - as you make two or three complete circles around this
>> place.....
>> you have the opportunity to observe drift, and be on differing
>> radials for lighting
>> changes on fences, wires, trees, furrows, etc.
>>
>> Point into Wind if you can.
>> Positive Points - think happy things about this place now that you
>> have inspected
>> it well and have a nice Place Picked to Touch, and to Halt.
>>
>> The others told you, you need to know course and landable spots before
>> you
>> leave home. XC dual is always a good thing. Fly a route in an
>> airplane, and take
>> the edge off, or practice field evals from the plane, and go compare
>> data from the ground
>> after that route flight.
>>
>> You need to be able to land accurately, always.
>> This means knowing your factors for adjustment of flare distance and
>> taxi distance.
>> (Which are: Approach Speed, Approach Configuration (%spoilers),
>> headwind component,
>> slope, texture and braking ability of the machine.)
>>
>> Yes, spot land the heck out of every landing. Pick your flaring place,
>> know your distance
>> in flare to a touch spot, and know your braking distance for your
>> touchdown attitude
>> and configuration. And for Mark and all of us, yeah, don't scare or
>> threaten
>> the home 'drome gnomes while you do this practice.
>>
>> When you know you are in command of landings, and have a tug pilot
>> ready for a
>> breather away from local duty, and have a decent day and your
>> composure, leaving
>> won't be so bad. You'll have a great story to tell us in July.
>>
>> Fly safely,
>>
>> Cindy B
>>
>>
> Congrats on being sufficiently motivated to ask your original question,
> and for having the gumption to do it. (Hmmm...methinks that sort of goes
> for the very act of soaring, too!) As you know by now, a person really
> CAN obtain useful information related to actual soaring on RAS!
>
> My most general feedback is: "What everyone else has already said."
>
> The only off-field-landing damage I've done (so far) was to
> dirt-clod-poke-a-hole in my 1-26's fabric adjacent the skid on my 3rd-ever
> off-field landing. It came from choosing a nice, chocolatey-brown, plowed
> field to land in. Key word 'plowed.' As in it hadn't been disced or
> harrowed or raked or otherwise further tended to. On short final it dawned
> on me the biggest clod in the field was about to arrive. 1-26's safely
> let you make such beginner mistakes at minimal cost and personal risk.
>
> I'm probably dumber than Cindy, and have used a shorter
> pre-off-field-landing checklist for decades. It's S*O*A*R.
>
> S - Surface
> O - Obstructions
> A - Approach
> R - Rectangle
>
> If you implement each of these checks/actions sequentially and in an
> un-rushed fashion, your OFL should be no less sweaty-palmed than a routine
> landing at your home field. (Of course, your palms WILL sweat more, but
> they won't *need* to! :-) )
>
> SURFACE - I prioritize my OFL choices into 3 groups.
> Priority 1 fields are those with *known* smooth, low-risk, essentially
> level surfaces, of sufficient width for my wings and length for my
> rollout. Essentially, these are recently harrowed agricultural fields,
> whose furrows are not a factor in landing direction.
>
> Priority 2 fields are everything not Priority 1 or Priority 3. You'll
> note this includes airports, incidentally, as many have hungry lights
> lusting for glider wingtips. (So I'm a cautious soaring coward. It
> bothers me not one bit.) Priority 2 fields are the ones I work really,
> REALLY hard in assessing, as they're the ones with the most unknowns I
> have to identify and assess before willingly risking my ship by landing on
> them.
>
> Priority 3 fields are those any horizontal arrival may likely result in
> considerable damage to plane and possibly self. They're 'no-brainers' for
> me. I simply won't land on them, and give them no further thought or
> attention once identifying and discarding them. Western prairie, for
> example. Scary stuff IMHO..but not every pilot of retractable glass i
> know agrees with me. Point is, YOU get to identify and set the risk
> parameters within which you're willing to soar. Better, IMHO, to be an
> OFL wimp than kicking yourself over a busted gear or tailboom from that
> yucca you didn't notice, or the prairie dog hole/mound, or some
> soil-encrusted rock that did its worst.
>
> Books can be - and have been - written about how to assess and choose
> field surfaces. Attempting conciseness on RAS is probably futile, so I
> won't try. But if you choose a poor surface, and still implement the rest
> of your checks perfectly, you run the risk of breaking the glider, so
> surface analysis is crucial to any XC soaring pilot, regardless of skill
> level or L/D.
>
> OBSTRUCTIONS - As used in this checklist these are anything sticking up
> from my chosen field, OR, things not there (as in dirt-free-zones of
> critter holes). If you've chosen a good surface, identified any/all
> potential obstructions and worked backward to identify the pattern
> required to get you onto your field while avoiding the obstructions, the
> next thing (still working backwards) is...
>
> APPROACH - Here you're looking for "airborne gotchas!" NOT directly on
> your field, e.g. bordering fences/trees/powerlines, hillocks, etc. The
> "gotchas" aren't generally airborne, but if you are when one gets you, it
> won't be pretty. This is an area I've found many beginners don't
> genuinely appreciate. A starting/useful rule-of-thumb is you need to
> multiply your necessary field length by 10 times the height of any
> "gotcha." So that nice, comfy, 1,000' long disced field you're
> eyeballing, suddenly becomes 50% shorter because of those 50' trees
> surrounding it. Aren't you happy you're flying a 1-26, now?
>
> RECTANGLE - Make every OFL pattern a full rectangle, for only by so doing
> can you with (nearly 100%) certainty identify wind strength and direction.
> (You DO want to land into the wind, don't you?) Also, it gives you the
> best perspective(s) of your selected field you can get short of walking it
> beforehand.
>
> Two final things to ponder.
> One - though you'll probably want to have successfully completed your
> "SOA" assessments by 'some comfortable altitude' (in my case several
> thousand feet, wry chuckle), human eyeballs are incapable of so doing.
> What you'll conclude only through direct experience is you can (generally)
> accurately conclude the "S" part by the time you're down to ~2k agl, the
> smaller "O" bits won't be satisfactorily identifiable until the 1k-2k agl
> level, and you might in fact be assessing them still on short
> final...depending... The "A" bits are (for me, anyway) generally easy to
> assess, while still well above crosswind height. But you've gotta be
> *checking* for them, or bad things can easily happen...
> The general point is, if you do your worrying, fretting, assessing, and
> decision-making above pattern height, by the time you're in the pattern,
> you can relax and be reasonably certain you're about to make as no-sweat a
> landing as you're used to making on your home airport.
>
> Two - Paradoxically, THE most difficult time of day to assess fields from
> aloft is when the soaring is likely to be best, i.e. when the sun is high
> overhead. Why? Little help from shadows in assessing things like field
> slopes, plant/obstruction heights, etc. So, delaying your landing until
> as late as possible has a whole host of benefits. Yee hah!
>
> In closing, if you can't consistently fly approaches to a pre-selected
> landing 'spot' you need to lengthen your field choices accordingly. IMHO,
> it's much more important to be able to fly a well coordinated and
> speed-consistent pattern than it is to be able to arrive 'at a spot.' The
> idea is to arrive horizontally at some pre-selected speed (i.e. energy
> level), above a Priority One surface, heading upwind. Everything else is
> secondary. Once you've attained consistency IN the pattern, 'the spot'
> eventually falls out in the wash.
>
> Most of all...have FUN!!!
>
> Regards,
> Bob - wimpy - W.

[Frank[_1_]]

On Jun 27, 3:08 pm, 126Driver > wrote:
> I would like to fly more cross country flights but have to admit I
> usually come up with a list of excuses for not going on any particular
> day. The weather is never good enough, or I have a dinner engagement,
> or my battery seems low, or something. Some of this is a general
> concern about personal injury, but I think I am also just afraid of
> landing out and having to put up with the inconvenience of a retrieve
> and getting criticism from other pilots in my club. (I did some damage
> to my glider on a land out last year and I have lost a lot of
> confidence.) I thought I would get over this, but have not so far.
> Has anybody else been through a period like this, and if so, how did
> you work it out?
>
> thanks,
>
> Steve

Reading through the other replies, I think I could add one more thing
for you to think about. If you know of a local pilot who flies
contests, offer to crew for them at a regional meet. You will have a
great time and can talk to a lot of other XC pilots. Also, any XC
pilot worth his/her salt will greatly welcome the offer, and will
probably return the favor by helping you get going again. Then maybe
set a goal of flying in a regional contest in Sports Class, somewhere
with a very benign task area.

TA

[Eric Greenwell]

Ian wrote:
> On 28 Jun, 16:11, Mike the Strike > wrote:
>>> Finally, try to avoid routes which go over, or very near airfields.
>>> It's OK and reassuring to pass within gliding range from time to time,
>>> but runways suck gliders towards them. Well known fact.
>
>> You obviously haven't flown much in the US southwest. Over much of our
>> terrain, you can either land at an airfield or crash into cactus or
>> tree-strewn mountains. Landable strips are an essential part of our
>> database.
>
> In such places it is obviously sensible to keep landing places in
> mind, but I still think it's a mistake to fly directly over them.
> There is a strange magnetic attraction at work ...

It also annoys the skydivers...

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly
* "Transponders in Sailplanes" http://tinyurl.com/y739x4
* "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org