Extending new pilot comfort zone?

On Jan 7, 7:19*am, tstock wrote:
Hi everyone, I've been reading "Advanced Soaring Made Easy" by Bernard
Eckey, and this is a fantastic book for a new pilot. *It does discuss
learning to get out of the comfort zone of flying safely within glide
range of the airport. *This is something I am just venturing into
myself and I was curious how some of you went about this when you were
learning?

When and how did you cut the strings for the first time? Was it with
an instructor? Did you do it in small steps, or did you just plan a
cross country flight? *Or did you land out by accident once and get
thrown over that initial fear?

Since I am still renting a glider, it can be a bit of a problem if I
land out, but I would like to start flying a bit further outside my
comfort zone.

I was considering asking a more experienced pilot if I could "ride
along" with them on a cross country flight to help me get over the
butterflies.

Any advice appreciated,
Tom

Reflecting on my own experience I'd say:

1) Find a way to simulate an outlanding. I know part of my pre-solo
training involved landing at an unfamiliar airport, followed by an
aerotow back home. In that case the other airport was a few miles away
so there was no real risk in getting there. If that doesn't work for
you it helps a lot just doing landings at your own field where you
cover up the altimeter and mark off on the runway where you "clear the
trees at the threshold" versus "need to stop before the cattle fence".

2) Do your Silver distance. If you can manage it do it on a day where
you can get high enough that you always have either the home airfield
or the destination airfield well within gliding distance. Letting go
of the home airport is a big psychological step. Even though I lived
on the east coast at the time I did my Sliver distance in Arizona
where even in a 1-26 you could more or less have the destination
dialed in before you left home.

3) Start setting tasks that allow you to fly "airport to airport"
where you always have a runway within gliding distance. With today's
flight computers this is pretty easy to do, but you can also use a
tool like GlidePlan to make custom charts that tell you how high you
need to be to get to an airport from wherever you are
(www.glideplan.com). Practice picking out landable fields as you fly
around (even today I do this - from my glider and from my car).

4) Offer to go on retrieves at a contest. Getting to see for real what
an outlanding looks like takes some of the mystery out of it.

5) Fly XC with an experienced pilot. I never did this myself until I
had a lot of experience already, but with modern 2-seaters this is
much more doable and a great experience. If you can do it at a
contest so much the better. Some top competition pilots raise funds
for the US team by selling back seats in Duos at contests.

6) Start to submit flights to OLC. You need a logger for this, so by
now you'll be pretty serious about getting away from the field.
Tracking your XC miles is great positive feedback.

7) Buy a share in a glider and enter a contest in the sports class.
Okay, that's pretty far down the path...

Good luck.

9B