On Aug 15, 6:02 pm, Chris Reed wrote:
toad wrote:
If you fly over farm country, then it's a non-issue.

....

And anyway, landouts in safe fields are not disastrous.

I'll second all that advice. I flew for almost 20 years without
really going cross country (I did get 10-15 miles away a few times,
but I was basically within gliding distance). Then, one day 2 years
ago I got caught in sink in the club L33 and got to meet a nice turf
farmer about 3 miles away from our airport. It was the nicest runway
I'd ever landed on! That got me over my internal resistance to cross
country flying.

Later that summer I finished up my silver badge and haven't looked
back. This year I flew my first regional contest and actually didn't
finish dead last! Last month I flew my gold distance/diamond goal
flight.

I have to say that it's nice flying with the PDA software. The
program I use (SoarPilot) highlights all the airports in gliding range
and can do glide over terrain if you need that. However, I do fly
without it sometimes for various reasons (on the diamond flight I
forgot a vital connector and couldn't use it). It helps that I am
comfortable using just a sectional and compass. The 3K/2K/1K rule
works quite well in any case.