The section implies a requirement (tacit, at least) to communicate a
distress or urgency, since both these situations indicate an uncertain
outcome. I've never heard a broadcast of mayday or pan, pan, pan prior
to an out landing (though I don't listen to 121.5). Do sailplane
pilots typcially declare an emergency before an outlanding? So many
pilots indicated in the farmer relations thread that an outlanding is
an emergency, I'm confused as to whether we should be declaring them.
I can't recall an outlanding (I've had roughly 75) where I didn't have
time to broadcast a pan, pan, pan. Of course, I never have. From time
to time I call other pilots to inform them of an outlanding (mine or
someone else's). But this has alway been a matter of convenience.

I'm looking for some validation here from those convinced that an
outlanding is an emergency. Do you truly treat it as an emergency in
as much as the AIM and FARs detail emergency operations? Or is this an
emergency of convenience, living in the gray of the regs so long as it
suits the pilot's need to retrieve his glider?