Are You Ashamed to Land Out?

On Wednesday, March 25, 2020 at 8:08:56 AM UTC-7, John DeRosa OHM Ω http://aviation.derosaweb.net wrote:
My first thought is "Of course people are ashamed (freightened may be a better word) to land out." ... at least the first time. It is fear of the unknown. What will people think of me? Will I break something? Will I get hurt? I think everyone has felt this at one time or another. No one LIKpES to land out.

Letting go of the wind sock is a difficult mental hurdle. Get home-i-tis sets in. Landing out is, at the very least, an inconvenience be it a metal & difficult to take apart glider or modern glass one that is easy to do.

What is the solution? Of course we don't purposely train by actually landing out in a field somewhere. The alternative is to mandate spotting with the help of CFIGs good fields from the air and making it seem "normal" to landout. Read the books available! Simulation via Condor?

This training and mental hurdle can be difficult/scary in some regions (mountains, forested, etc) as compared to here in the flat Midwest where just about everywhere is landable.


Bottom line NOTHING is as good training as the reality. And that is a leap of faith sitting alone beyond final glide and getting low.

In the Tucson Soaring Club, we do 2 landout training sessions each year. The first one, we do at paved airports with the airport's support. We tow and release and land at the airport, We usually have a Line Chief at the field to coordinate traffic and help get the gliders off the pavement and back on when the tow plane lands, the the student does an unassisted takeoff, is towed to the second airport where the process is repeated

For the second session, we use 2 undeveloped strips, we inspect the fields for safety, and clear brush as required. These are strips that are on our list of aerotow permitted. On these landings, the student with the supervision of the instructor gets the glider ready and hooks up. The launch is IFR (I Follow Rope), as in our environment it is always really dusty!

This goes a long way to decreasing anxiety of the first landout.