Fear of flying cross country

Marc Ramsey wrote:

At our club we had a requirement to
land over a barrier, then get stopped within 500' prior to taking the
1-26 XC.

A reasonable test, if properly organized, but not something to do on a
day to day basis.


Why not?

I think we should do something similar, informally, on every
landing, where doing so does not conflict with other operational
requirements. If we don't set a standard of some sort for every
takeoff, every flight, every landing--how do we know what we can do,
whether we're making any progress, or even maintaining our skills?
After all, not having confidence in our abilities results in a
reluctance to fly XC.

Your suggestion that we focus on the touchdown point is very
important, but it is just part of the challenge. Getting stopped at
a certain point helps us to determine just how good a job we've done
of choosing the _right_ touchdown point, assessing the braking
available on a given surface, and the effects of slope and
vegetation on our roll-out distance.

Spot landings are fun and useful, but we need to know, and be able
to do, much more.


Jack

Jack wrote:
Marc Ramsey wrote:

At our club we had a requirement to
land over a barrier, then get stopped within 500' prior to taking the
1-26 XC.

A reasonable test, if properly organized, but not something to do on a
day to day basis.


Why not?

Because I've seen what happens when a newbie misjudges the distance it
will take to stop, and touches down a bit too late. This may be all
well and good if one has a large grass field, but not so nice if you're
operating on a runway with a staging area at the end, and other gliders
waiting to takeoff and land.

At Williams Soaring Center there are lines painted on the runway about
20 feet apart, far enough down the runway that an ASK-21 will just about
run out of momentum without braking by the time when it reaches the
staging area. A lot of us aim at a touchdown on a selected line every
flight, it's great practice, and there's plenty of margin for error.
Once you've executed a proper touchdown, how quickly you stop is a
mostly a function of how much damage you're willing to do to the glider...

Marc

On Jun 27, 10:19 pm, Marc Ramsey wrote:
Jack wrote:
Marc Ramsey wrote:

At our club we had a requirement to
land over a barrier, then get stopped within 500' prior to taking the
1-26 XC.
A reasonable test, if properly organized, but not something to do on a
day to day basis.
Why not?

Because I've seen what happens when a newbie misjudges the distance it
will take to stop, and touches down a bit too late. This may be all
well and good if one has a large grass field,

Wow.
This is the nicest thread, with the nicest people and contributions I
have seen on ras
in quite a while. Bravo guys, and I will pitch in a little also.

There is a difference in land out and
land - away - from - home.
A lot of the mental wigglies, and background peer noise can go away,
if you are willing to make and live with above-glide-slope discipline
to known
airports (or aeroretrievable places depending on your region of the
country).
Airport sized places reduce risk, and social complications.
Get an air tow home. For 50km flights, it may be cheaper than the
friends dinner's
and trailer and gas time.

My first XC flights were in 1-26s (not even mine), and my current XC
flights are
also mostly not in my own airframes. (Thank you to many folks.) I want
to take
extremely good care of the glider(s). I have many land aways. I have
few
landouts, as those are very risky to gliders in CA/NV territories.
All my landouts
have been on places I have walked with my sneakers before I flew
there.
(This might affect my access to pretty airframes?)

Do I stretch things? Not beyond glide discipline with adjustment for
wind
and margin for inefficiency for me and that day's glider. In 30
years, I've only been
seriously challenged on margin twice, and I go places a bunch, usually
in a
twin with a student.

I teach that you need to S.S.T.O.P.P. soaring and plan a good landing
from a
reasonable distance above a known landing spot.

Size(span) - how many lanes of traffic wide do you need? 1-26 about
four lanes, 15Mtr six lanes.
Size(length) - how many times long is it versus its width? That will
get you a pretty
good handle on sizes.

Slope - is there any? Prioritize uphill versus upwind for that
landing.

Texture - airport textures are good. Fields - color, pattern, shadows
tell us more info.
You may have to pick with furrows over into wind or slope.

Obstacles - as you make two or three complete circles around this
place.....
you have the opportunity to observe drift, and be on differing
radials for lighting
changes on fences, wires, trees, furrows, etc.

Point into Wind if you can.
Positive Points - think happy things about this place now that you
have inspected
it well and have a nice Place Picked to Touch, and to Halt.

The others told you, you need to know course and landable spots before
you
leave home. XC dual is always a good thing. Fly a route in an
airplane, and take
the edge off, or practice field evals from the plane, and go compare
data from the ground
after that route flight.

You need to be able to land accurately, always.
This means knowing your factors for adjustment of flare distance and
taxi distance.
(Which a Approach Speed, Approach Configuration (%spoilers),
headwind component,
slope, texture and braking ability of the machine.)

Yes, spot land the heck out of every landing. Pick your flaring place,
know your distance
in flare to a touch spot, and know your braking distance for your
touchdown attitude
and configuration. And for Mark and all of us, yeah, don't scare or
threaten
the home 'drome gnomes while you do this practice.

When you know you are in command of landings, and have a tug pilot
ready for a
breather away from local duty, and have a decent day and your
composure, leaving
won't be so bad. You'll have a great story to tell us in July.

Fly safely,

Cindy B

I found that my biggest barrier was the thought of the retrieve
inconvenience of my friends. Talk it over with your friends. If there's
no cross country culture at your field, ask your wife, your spouse, a
non gliding friend whether she'd be willing to stand by for a possible
retrieve that evening. This will cost you a dinner, and of course you
will have to compensate by volunteering for something else. I found that
once the retrieve problem was not causing any bad feelings anymore, I
went cross country much more aggessively.

On 27 Jun, 20:08, 126Driver wrote:

Some of this is a general
concern about personal injury, but I think I am also just afraid of
landing out and having to put up with the inconvenience of a retrieve
and getting criticism from other pilots in my club.

I've met a few pilots like that. They are normally the ones who have
bought themselves 40+:1 in glass and use it to waddle round 100km
triangles on good days. Deep down they feel rather ashamed of
themselves, and they criticize landouts because they know that they
normally arise from a bit of adventurousness in flying which they lack
themselves.

But enough psychology. Rather than rely on a club retrieve, why not
form a mutual retrieve pact with a pal? One of you sets off on an
adventure and the other agrees to stay local-ish: you swap roles each
flying day.

The need to get back can really dampen the spirits. Why not have a
good old-fashioned downwind dash one day? Your retrieve crew can
follow you on the ground, and it's surprising just how far you can
get.

Finally, try to avoid routes which go over, or very near airfields.
It's OK and reassuring to pass within gliding range from time to time,
but runways suck gliders towards them. Well known fact.

Ian

Finally, try to avoid routes which go over, or very near airfields.
It's OK and reassuring to pass within gliding range from time to time,
but runways suck gliders towards them. Well known fact.

Ian

You obviously haven't flown much in the US southwest. Over much of our
terrain, you can either land at an airfield or crash into cactus or
tree-strewn mountains. Landable strips are an essential part of our
database.

Landing at a decent strip also has the advantage of getting an aero-
retrieve. More expensive, but less inconvenient.

I overcame my trepidation by flying over tiger country with a mentor
and then with a group of cross-country pilots who have a mutual
retrieve policy (steak dinner and lots of beer!)

Mike

Mike

On 28 Jun, 16:11, Mike the Strike wrote:
Finally, try to avoid routes which go over, or very near airfields.
It's OK and reassuring to pass within gliding range from time to time,
but runways suck gliders towards them. Well known fact.

You obviously haven't flown much in the US southwest. Over much of our
terrain, you can either land at an airfield or crash into cactus or
tree-strewn mountains. Landable strips are an essential part of our
database.

In such places it is obviously sensible to keep landing places in
mind, but I still think it's a mistake to fly directly over them.
There is a strange magnetic attraction at work ...

Ian

ContestID67 wrote:

4) Equipment - Take you mind off navigation by flying with GPS. That
frees you to find that lift!!

An addition to that.

This applies if you carry a GPS and GPS-aware vario (one that can
compute final glides to a GPS way point. When you're local soaring make
sure both are running and that the GPS has your home field set as its
current way point. You can use the information these provide to push out
toward the glide angle limit and get a good feeling for being well away
from your home field, gain familiarity with the instruments and get to
know the wider local area. You'll also get a good feeling for how far
your glider can go from various heights. Just make sure you have a
conservative safety height set in the vario and have taken the trouble
to match its settings to your glider's polar.

I have an SDI C4 and a GPS II+ in my Std Libelle. If I'm soaring locally
rather than going XC this is the way I operate. Besides, doing this is a
lot more interesting that flapping round just outside the circuit.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

anonymous wrote:
I found that my biggest barrier was the thought of the retrieve
inconvenience of my friends. Talk it over with your friends. If there's
no cross country culture at your field, ask your wife, your spouse, a
non gliding friend whether she'd be willing to stand by for a possible
retrieve that evening. This will cost you a dinner, and of course you
will have to compensate by volunteering for something else. I found that
once the retrieve problem was not causing any bad feelings anymore, I
went cross country much more aggessively.

Or do the same as often happens in my club. Its common for a few pilots
to set off on the same task after having agreed to a mutual retrieve:
those who get back go and collect anybody who didn't make it.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

CindyASK wrote:
On Jun 27, 10:19 pm, Marc Ramsey wrote:

Jack wrote:

Marc Ramsey wrote:

At our club we had a requirement to
land over a barrier, then get stopped within 500' prior to taking the
1-26 XC.

A reasonable test, if properly organized, but not something to do on a
day to day basis.

Why not?

Because I've seen what happens when a newbie misjudges the distance it
will take to stop, and touches down a bit too late. This may be all
well and good if one has a large grass field,


Wow.
This is the nicest thread, with the nicest people and contributions I
have seen on ras
in quite a while. Bravo guys, and I will pitch in a little also.

There is a difference in land out and
land - away - from - home.
A lot of the mental wigglies, and background peer noise can go away,
if you are willing to make and live with above-glide-slope discipline
to known
airports (or aeroretrievable places depending on your region of the
country).
Airport sized places reduce risk, and social complications.
Get an air tow home. For 50km flights, it may be cheaper than the
friends dinner's
and trailer and gas time.

My first XC flights were in 1-26s (not even mine), and my current XC
flights are
also mostly not in my own airframes. (Thank you to many folks.) I want
to take
extremely good care of the glider(s). I have many land aways. I have
few
landouts, as those are very risky to gliders in CA/NV territories.
All my landouts
have been on places I have walked with my sneakers before I flew
there.
(This might affect my access to pretty airframes?)

Do I stretch things? Not beyond glide discipline with adjustment for
wind
and margin for inefficiency for me and that day's glider. In 30
years, I've only been
seriously challenged on margin twice, and I go places a bunch, usually
in a
twin with a student.

I teach that you need to S.S.T.O.P.P. soaring and plan a good landing
from a
reasonable distance above a known landing spot.

Size(span) - how many lanes of traffic wide do you need? 1-26 about
four lanes, 15Mtr six lanes.
Size(length) - how many times long is it versus its width? That will
get you a pretty
good handle on sizes.

Slope - is there any? Prioritize uphill versus upwind for that
landing.

Texture - airport textures are good. Fields - color, pattern, shadows
tell us more info.
You may have to pick with furrows over into wind or slope.

Obstacles - as you make two or three complete circles around this
place.....
you have the opportunity to observe drift, and be on differing
radials for lighting
changes on fences, wires, trees, furrows, etc.

Point into Wind if you can.
Positive Points - think happy things about this place now that you
have inspected
it well and have a nice Place Picked to Touch, and to Halt.

The others told you, you need to know course and landable spots before
you
leave home. XC dual is always a good thing. Fly a route in an
airplane, and take
the edge off, or practice field evals from the plane, and go compare
data from the ground
after that route flight.

You need to be able to land accurately, always.
This means knowing your factors for adjustment of flare distance and
taxi distance.
(Which a Approach Speed, Approach Configuration (%spoilers),
headwind component,
slope, texture and braking ability of the machine.)

Yes, spot land the heck out of every landing. Pick your flaring place,
know your distance
in flare to a touch spot, and know your braking distance for your
touchdown attitude
and configuration. And for Mark and all of us, yeah, don't scare or
threaten
the home 'drome gnomes while you do this practice.

When you know you are in command of landings, and have a tug pilot
ready for a
breather away from local duty, and have a decent day and your
composure, leaving
won't be so bad. You'll have a great story to tell us in July.

Fly safely,

Cindy B


Congrats on being sufficiently motivated to ask your original question,
and for having the gumption to do it. (Hmmm...methinks that sort of
goes for the very act of soaring, too!) As you know by now, a person
really CAN obtain useful information related to actual soaring on RAS!

My most general feedback is: "What everyone else has already said."

The only off-field-landing damage I've done (so far) was to
dirt-clod-poke-a-hole in my 1-26's fabric adjacent the skid on my
3rd-ever off-field landing. It came from choosing a nice,
chocolatey-brown, plowed field to land in. Key word 'plowed.' As in it
hadn't been disced or harrowed or raked or otherwise further tended to.
On short final it dawned on me the biggest clod in the field was about
to arrive. 1-26's safely let you make such beginner mistakes at minimal
cost and personal risk.

I'm probably dumber than Cindy, and have used a shorter
pre-off-field-landing checklist for decades. It's S*O*A*R.

S - Surface
O - Obstructions
A - Approach
R - Rectangle

If you implement each of these checks/actions sequentially and in an
un-rushed fashion, your OFL should be no less sweaty-palmed than a
routine landing at your home field. (Of course, your palms WILL sweat
more, but they won't *need* to! :-) )

SURFACE - I prioritize my OFL choices into 3 groups.
Priority 1 fields are those with *known* smooth, low-risk, essentially
level surfaces, of sufficient width for my wings and length for my
rollout. Essentially, these are recently harrowed agricultural fields,
whose furrows are not a factor in landing direction.

Priority 2 fields are everything not Priority 1 or Priority 3. You'll
note this includes airports, incidentally, as many have hungry lights
lusting for glider wingtips. (So I'm a cautious soaring coward. It
bothers me not one bit.) Priority 2 fields are the ones I work really,
REALLY hard in assessing, as they're the ones with the most unknowns I
have to identify and assess before willingly risking my ship by landing
on them.

Priority 3 fields are those any horizontal arrival may likely result in
considerable damage to plane and possibly self. They're 'no-brainers'
for me. I simply won't land on them, and give them no further thought
or attention once identifying and discarding them. Western prairie, for
example. Scary stuff IMHO..but not every pilot of retractable glass i
know agrees with me. Point is, YOU get to identify and set the risk
parameters within which you're willing to soar. Better, IMHO, to be an
OFL wimp than kicking yourself over a busted gear or tailboom from that
yucca you didn't notice, or the prairie dog hole/mound, or some
soil-encrusted rock that did its worst.

Books can be - and have been - written about how to assess and choose
field surfaces. Attempting conciseness on RAS is probably futile, so I
won't try. But if you choose a poor surface, and still implement the
rest of your checks perfectly, you run the risk of breaking the glider,
so surface analysis is crucial to any XC soaring pilot, regardless of
skill level or L/D.

OBSTRUCTIONS - As used in this checklist these are anything sticking up
from my chosen field, OR, things not there (as in dirt-free-zones of
critter holes). If you've chosen a good surface, identified any/all
potential obstructions and worked backward to identify the pattern
required to get you onto your field while avoiding the obstructions, the
next thing (still working backwards) is...

APPROACH - Here you're looking for "airborne gotchas!" NOT directly on
your field, e.g. bordering fences/trees/powerlines, hillocks, etc. The
"gotchas" aren't generally airborne, but if you are when one gets you,
it won't be pretty. This is an area I've found many beginners don't
genuinely appreciate. A starting/useful rule-of-thumb is you need to
multiply your necessary field length by 10 times the height of any
"gotcha." So that nice, comfy, 1,000' long disced field you're
eyeballing, suddenly becomes 50% shorter because of those 50' trees
surrounding it. Aren't you happy you're flying a 1-26, now?

RECTANGLE - Make every OFL pattern a full rectangle, for only by so
doing can you with (nearly 100%) certainty identify wind strength and
direction. (You DO want to land into the wind, don't you?) Also, it
gives you the best perspective(s) of your selected field you can get
short of walking it beforehand.

Two final things to ponder.
One - though you'll probably want to have successfully completed your
"SOA" assessments by 'some comfortable altitude' (in my case several
thousand feet, wry chuckle), human eyeballs are incapable of so doing.
What you'll conclude only through direct experience is you can
(generally) accurately conclude the "S" part by the time you're down to
~2k agl, the smaller "O" bits won't be satisfactorily identifiable until
the 1k-2k agl level, and you might in fact be assessing them still on
short final...depending... The "A" bits are (for me, anyway) generally
easy to assess, while still well above crosswind height. But you've
gotta be *checking* for them, or bad things can easily happen...
The general point is, if you do your worrying, fretting, assessing,
and decision-making above pattern height, by the time you're in the
pattern, you can relax and be reasonably certain you're about to make as
no-sweat a landing as you're used to making on your home airport.

Two - Paradoxically, THE most difficult time of day to assess fields
from aloft is when the soaring is likely to be best, i.e. when the sun
is high overhead. Why? Little help from shadows in assessing things
like field slopes, plant/obstruction heights, etc. So, delaying your
landing until as late as possible has a whole host of benefits. Yee hah!

In closing, if you can't consistently fly approaches to a pre-selected
landing 'spot' you need to lengthen your field choices accordingly.
IMHO, it's much more important to be able to fly a well coordinated and
speed-consistent pattern than it is to be able to arrive 'at a spot.'
The idea is to arrive horizontally at some pre-selected speed (i.e.
energy level), above a Priority One surface, heading upwind. Everything
else is secondary. Once you've attained consistency IN the pattern,
'the spot' eventually falls out in the wash.

Most of all...have FUN!!!

Regards,
Bob - wimpy - W.