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