Private airport or small field for landout?

On Thursday, May 28, 2020 at 10:24:25 AM UTC-7, Eric Greenwell wrote:
Jonathan St. Cloud wrote on 5/28/2020 5:40 AM:
On Wednesday, May 27, 2020 at 7:44:14 PM UTC-7, George Haeh wrote:
"Land in the dirt, you won't get hurt" has, so far, worked well for me..

Farmers don't get worked up about crop damage when it's not even an inch high.

With private strips, width can be a deal/glider breaker. I passed up one in the book because the stated width looked a tight squeeze. And I once saw the green (corn) stains on the tips of an 18m self launcher. The owner had the look of a narrow escape on him. The private strips I have used were known to my local club as wide enough for gliders. The owners have been hospitable and happy to talk airplanes. There's the rare one that won't allow aerotow retrieve because of liability considerations.

You can compare the width to power pole spacing.

No matter how hard you study the local fields and airports, the day will likely come when you have to evaluate fields from the air. It's been recommended for aspiring XC pilots to evaluate possible fields from the air and drive over for a look.

I fly in the mountains of the west. Very few fields where I fly, but where I grew up in Idaho, I would not want to land those lowed fields. I used to work pea harvest and there would be dirt clods, hard dirt clods that could take your landing gear out and break your back. So "land in the dirt and you won't get hurt" is again, a guideline, not a rule. Lots of plowed fields are well plowed many are not.

"You don't get hurt in the dirt" is best applied in eastern Washington State,
where the dirt is more like face powder and sand, and plowing doesn't produce the
kinds of clumps/clods you see in Kansas and other places with "real" dirt and lots
more moisture. It's also a pretty good mantra in much of Idaho and eastern Oregon.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

No, I think applies virtually anywhere. A plowed field will be free of any large rocks (they damage farm equipment), is fairly uniform for proper irrigation, won't have deep drainage ditches, barbed wire fences, chunks of discarded metal, bushes, irrigation pipes, etc. Next on the list is a field with a low crop and dirt is visible between the crop rows. A much worse option is a pasture where all of the above is a possibility if not a likelihood.

I once landed on what turned out to be an abandoned air stip south of Air Sailing in an ASW19. While in the pattern I could see that the air strip was narrow with high berms on both sides. I didn't think my wings would clear the berms so I landed on one of the berms (which turned out to be the case).. It worked out ok, but it was an eye-opener on how deceiving these strips are at altitude.

Tom