On 12/21/2014 3:02 PM, Mike the Strike wrote:
I suspect one of the main problems with landings away from the home field
is that many pilots won't give up looking for lift at an altitude where a
proper disciplined approach is possible and end up making a rushed approach
with poor speed control and turns at low altitude. I know I'm guilty of
this!

Mike


I doff my cap in your direction for having the spine to publicly admit to
occasional lack of pre-planned off-field-landing pattern discipline (from
someone relatively well-known in the SW US contest scene, no less!); maybe
doing so will motivate someone fairly new on the XC learning curve to re-think
their current - and possibly misguided - XC outlanding plan. (I suspect that
most of the honest among us will mentally admit to being able to benefit from
an unblinking rethink...)

Perhaps I was more cowardly than many fresh out of college, my age upon
discovering soaring, but the thought of making an off-field landing was
genuinely intimidating to me at the relatively immortal age of 22. I may have
then felt mySELF immortal (can't remember, ha ha!)...but definitely not the
glider!

And not that I was looking for any, but I never found reason to dispute the
knowledge my officemate (Wil Schuemann) and my instructor sought to impart, a
fundamental part of it being that an off-field pattern should be no different
than one to one's departure airport, and if anything it should be better, more
precise, and as "spotworthy" as any dead-day airfield spot landing contest's
winner's. In their views, the only difference in an OFL would (and should)
have been the pre-pattern-entry-height field assessment...and they both
emphasized that pattern entry height should be identical to a routine one
entered at the home field.

All that insight was imparted to me in '72/'73. Since then I've seen, learned
of and read about (WAY too many) reasons NOT to dispute their wisdom and
advice. The worst cases have involved serious pilot injury and death;
definitely no fun to be had on those kind of retrieve adventures.

My observational experience includes only two kinds of broken-in-OFL
sailplanes: 1) poor surface/approach/obstruction/etc. field choice and 2)
lousy (usually, close-in, too fast, too high/overshot) pattern. Sometimes 1) &
2) were combined.

When it comes to glider landing patterns - OFL or on-airport - it definitely
pays to have a plan and to fly it. My best patterns have been when I carried
on a running conversation in my head about how - and why - the pattern was
going, while some memorably mediocre (being kind to myself) ones were flown by
rote.

YMMV,
Bob W.