Your First Land Out

On Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 7:41:19 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
Describe your first land out and tell us if you had any specific prior
training for cross country flying or for landing in an unusual place.

As stated elsewhere, formal training for cross country flying and
landing out is sorely lacking in the USA.Â* Yes, there are a few places
where you can go to seek this type of training but, unless you live
there or nearby, you won't get it.

My story:

I owned a Mosquito and had an accomplished cross country pilot as a
friend and mentor.Â* He took me out surfing a cold front in central Texas
and opened my eyes to cross country flying.Â* Following that, there was a
local weekend contest at our club and I got a lot of good advice from
the contestants.

I don't recall the flight in which I had my first land out, but I do
recall the landing.Â* I found a beautiful green field and set up a
pattern to land and, on short final, it became apparent that it was a
vineyard!Â* Fortunately for me, there was a plowed field adjacent to the
vineyard and it was a simple maneuver to side step and complete the
landing across the furrows.Â* It was a bit rough and the field was sloped
upward in the direction of the landing so it was short due to the
slope.Â* There was no damage and the farmer, sitting on his tractor,
attached a rope to the release and towed me out of the field.

--
Dan, 5J

I had an unusual one with a helicopter, kind of. Was doing my Commercial helicopter check ride, flying a factory MDHC MD 520N. The check pilot was Boeing's chief helicopter test pilot. We had done maneuvers on the airport and were heading to a practice area for more work, flying downwind when the check pilot rolled the throttle off, I dumped collective did a 180 turn into the wind and auto'd onto a road. I immediately heard "What the f#ck was that? I responded, a 180 auto, check airman said, well I thought you would roll throttle on in the flare, to which I said, "yeah ditto, since you are in control of check ride I thought you if you didn't want a touchdown on a public road you would have rolled throttle on." I picked the bird up as traffic was coming and heard, well good job on auto, guess we don't need another one. COMMUNICATION.