Are off-airport landouts common and/or dangerous?

I know one club where a landout is required before solo. The field happens to be adjacent and the farmer leaves a landing lane when he bales hay.

I was working on my second duration flight for my bronze badge when the radio announced a runway change. Not too long after, the quarry thermals packed it in and I belatedly realized I was now downwind of the field. But there were lots of freshly seeded long fields with furrows crosswind as I headed back. Then I found a field with furrows into the wind and worked out a landing lane clear of slope, power lines and tree. Continued looking for a thermal at high key until at circuit height and landed.

A private owner squeaked it back over the woods about the same time and admitted he would have been wiser to have landed out.

There's a significant number of gliders crunched in poor terrain near the home field after they had passed over landable fields. Sadder are the cases where the pilot spins in making a dodgy approach at the home field after arriving low.

On Sunday, May 26, 2019 at 2:00:05 PM UTC-7, Charles Ethridge wrote:
Hi all.

First off, I was a fairly experienced CFI and Chief Flight Instructor with a great record, and am now a Commercial Glider Pilot, so I'm not a total newbie in the glider world.

I realize that my initial question may be obvious to some, but here in South Florida, we NEVER land out in fields (unless there is an emergency, of course). We only land out at one other airport, and even that is quite rare.

The question has two parts:

1. Are off-airport landouts common?

I've now heard/read two different philosophies on this. One is from Garret Willat's articles, in which he essentially says that if you are not landing out fairly often, you are not flying aggressively enough in your contests. Is he meaning landing out in unknown fields? or just at known-to-be-safe fields and airports?

The opposite philosophy I THOUGHT I heard in David Lessnick's great webinar last week was that one should ALWAYS be landing out at airports and never on roads or unknown fields....or at least have a KNOWN-TO-BE-SAFE field or airport within your glide range.

2. When landing out, are your gliders often damaged, even just a little bit?

The reason I ask is that I've been flying my glider fairly regularly for the past few years. I fly quite conservatively (compared to what I read in Soaring magazine anyway) and have NEVER damaged it, not even slightly. I am retired and not rich, and so when I think about how much it would cost to get even slight damage fixed, I hesitate to even contemplate doing cross-country flights, due to the risk of damage during landout, but more so due to the risk of my insurance company upping my premiums or canceling my policy altogether. If my glider is totaled by my insurance company, I doubt that I could afford to get another one like it, since I got a very good glider at a great price.

Tom Knauff, in his book After Solo, recommends specific and thorough landout training for the reason he states (p 122):

"During the 1987 Sports Class Nationals, more than 30% of the pilots entered in the contest, damaged their ships during off field landings!"

But as far as I know (Soaring magazine ads, webinars, this forum), no one is teaching such a course. So without confidence in landing out without ANY damage, is cross-country flying thus a rich man's sport?

Charles "Ben" Ethridge

David Lessnick's excellent webinar revealed two glaring weaknesses:
1. Lessnick had only one actual off-airport landing prior to going to flying in tiger country (eastern Nevada).
2. He passed up a perfectly good dry lake bed (the gold standard for off-airport landings in this country) to land on the worst possible choice: a road.

People need to get plenty of experience landing off-airport prior to heading into tiger country because they simply don't know how they will react when confronted with this situation.

As already mentioned, you need to go scout out these fields IN ADVANCE; fields that look great from 5kft+ will look totally different from the ground.

I also know of fatalities involving gliders that attempted to (unsuccessfully) glide into an airport (as recommended in this thread) rather than landing on a perfectly safe field that they passed by.

Tom

That sounds like great preparation for cross country for club members
using club equipment.Â* Private owners, on the other hand, have much more
flexibility to explore on their own and, possibly, to break their
ships.Â* I was fortunate in that another club member with the same type
of glider took me by the hand and led me around a cross country course.Â*
Then it was a matter of going further away and testing my new found skills.

And yes, I landed out a few times.

On 5/29/2019 3:00 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Wed, 29 May 2019 08:51:26 -0600, Dan Marotta wrote:

Really?Â* Four hundred actual off field landings?Â* Or low approaches with
the engine running?Â* There's a big difference (unless the engine quits
during the go-around).

UK rules: no solo XC without a cross country endorsement on your bronze
badge, so the Bronze is the first prerequisite. This requires 50 solo
flights of which at least two must be soaring flights of 30 mins or
longer, two written papers + flying tests.

XC endorsement requires instructed flights covering navigation, field
selection and field landings plus a 1 hour and a two hour soaring flight.
In my club we do everything except the two soaring flights in a Scheibe
SF-25 TMG flown normally for navication and field selection exercises
and with enough power on to approximate a 30:1 glide for the landing
practise - the student picks the field, flys the circuit, base and finals
and the instructor takes over and climbs away at around 100 ft or so as
soon as its obvious the is well placed in the field and (obviously) takes
over somewhat earlier if the student has got it wrong. All three
exercises are repeated until both instructor and student are happy.

FWIW in my club new solo pilots are encouraged to start work on their
Bronze as soon as they've converted to an SZD Junior. We have two,
primarily for early solo flying. The Junior pilots are also encouraged to
work on their two Bronze duration flights plus the Silver height and
duration tasks as part of their pre-Bronze flying because all these can
be done while staying local to our field.

Like all my peers, I'd done the Bronze duration flights as well as Silver
height and duration before I got the Bronze XC Endorsement and then flew
Silver Distance in a Junior on the next day that the duty instructor
thought conditions were suitable. This all happened within two weeks of
me completing the field landing exercises, so they were reinforced nicely
because the task I was set was to fly to another gliding club 60km away,
which I'd never previously seen, and land there.



--
Dan, 5J

Lots of great answers, so no much for me to add, and I’ll probably repeat some of what was already said.
Known airports are of course the safest option, but if you stick to only known airports, you will significantly handicap yourself and will actually land out more often.
Known fields are somewhat less safe since the field condition changes through the season, but are usually good options.
Unknown but good looking fields are almost as safe if you know what to look for, especially power lines, fences, slope, surface type etc.
The last in the list are unknown fields which looks like they will probably be landable, with risk of ground loop. These could be sonsidered only when the likelihood of landout is low (chances of finding lift are very high). As a rule of thumb, the less the chances to find lift the more conservative your options should be.

In David’s case, he found himself very low over unlandable terrain (4WD dirt roads in the mountains are unlandable) with no plan B, and nearly zero chance to find lift, and had to crash land. He now owns a glider with an FES

In 20 years of aggressive XC soaring I have well over hundred landouts, but less than 10 in fields, and less than 5 in unknowns fields. The worst damage I had was a gear collapse in a rough field (in an LS4 which are notorious for gear collapse) and very recently some belly scratches due to landing in a plowed field.
Well there was that winnemucca dry lake landing which wasn’t completely dry, but this is another story for another time, and over 20 years ago so don’t count, but yeah, beware of dry lakes which may not be dry....

Ramy

On Wed, 29 May 2019 21:13:38 -0600, Dan Marotta wrote:

That sounds like great preparation for cross country for club members
using club equipment.

That's BGA rules I was quoting, so applies to all gliding operations in
the UK, with added stuff showing how my club implements them.

All civilian gliding activity I'm aware of is club-based and, since all
civilian gliding clubs clubs are BGA clubs, it follows that the BGA
Bronze training syllibus and requirements for XC covers all civilian
gliding.

AFAIK only other gliding activity in the UK is handled by the RAFGSA
clubs, and the RAF's Air Training Corps, which gives air experience
flying and training to solo, but no XC experience.

I was fortunate in that another club member with the same type
of glider took me by the hand and led me around a cross country course.
Then it was a matter of going further away and testing my new found
skills.

Our instructors do that fairly regularly - they're all XC pilots and will
be miles away if its a soarable day and they're not rostered to instruct.
Our ASK-21s are used on good days to take pre-solo students on XC flights
and we recently bought a Perkoz with exactly that sort of training in
mind.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 4:17:59 AM UTC-4, Ramy wrote:
In 20 years of aggressive XC soaring I have well over hundred landouts, but less than 10 in fields, and less than 5 in unknowns fields. The worst damage I had was a gear collapse in a rough field (in an LS4 which are notorious for gear collapse) and very recently some belly scratches due to landing in a plowed field.
Well there was that winnemucca dry lake landing which wasn’t completely dry, but this is another story for another time, and over 20 years ago so don’t count, but yeah, beware of dry lakes which may not be dry...

Ramy

Ramy (et al): How did you get your INITIAL crosscountry/landout training? Was it formal, in-flight and required before doing your first crosscountry, like Martin Gregorie details above? or did you mostly just figure it out yourself as you went along, and stayed lucky? or something in between those two extremes, like what CindyB says about AirSailing Camp? (Note that I don't consider formal, required in-flight landout training to be "extreme", just apparently uncommon in the USA).

When I was listening to David Lessnick's great webinar, I kept thinking "There, but for the grace of God, go I." David seems like an intelligent, thoughtful, trainable guy, who just got unlucky. He was very brave to do that webinar. It is what prompted me to start this post.

Ben

On Thu, 30 May 2019 10:27:22 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:

That's BGA rules I was quoting, so applies to all gliding operations in
the UK, with added stuff showing how my club implements them.

I should have added that, since EASA is the overall controlling body for
aviation in Europe and the European Gliding Union, among its other
activities, coordinates communication between national gliding
associations and EASA, its very likely that similar requirements apply to
all XC glider flying in all European countries.

I can't say more than that because The only places I've flown (apart from
here, NZ and the USA) are Germany and Austria, where the way things are
done felt very familiar: when I rocked up at the Wasserkuppe the other
year I got sent out for a check-ride and site familiarisation in an
ASK-21 and was then sent solo in an ASK-23 - just what I'd expect if I
visited a UK or NZ club without taking my own glider there.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On 5/30/2019 4:37 AM, Charles Ethridge wrote:
Snip...

Ramy (et al): How did you get your INITIAL crosscountry/landout training?
Was it formal, in-flight and required before doing your first crosscountry,
like Martin Gregorie details above? or did you mostly just figure it out
yourself as you went along, and stayed lucky? or something in between those
two extremes, like what CindyB says about AirSailing Camp? (Note that I
don't consider formal, required in-flight landout training to be "extreme",
just apparently uncommon in the USA).

Since my jury dooty call got canceled...

My initial XC/landout training consisted of my instructor covering the basics
(i.e. "How not to be stupid...") when fearful-young-me asked about off-field
landings (this was in the Alleghenies, Cumberland, MD). And the weekend before
the 3 of us (him/me/fellow-newbie/now-1/3-owners of instructor's formerly
home-built 1-26) I was sufficiently un-stupid to (dismayedly/din-wanna)
land-out maybe 2 air miles from the gliderport. A week later, fellow newbie
1/3-owner and I retrieved instructor from a plowed field on a contest
flight...and soon learned it was his *first* (!).

When I (somewhat heatedly) challenged him on his qualifications for "teaching
me the basics" (which worked just fine, in a river-bottom pasture), he simply
laughed and asked, "What did you need to know that you didn't know?" He had a
point...


When I was listening to David Lessnick's great webinar, I kept thinking
"There, but for the grace of God, go I." David seems like an intelligent,
thoughtful, trainable guy, who just got unlucky. He was very brave to do
that webinar. It is what prompted me to start this post.

Ben

Inre your thought, that's what learning from others' mistakes is all about!!!
:-) You appear to be on a sensible track...

Have fun and best of luck!

Bob W.

---
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com

Thirty-odd years ago a friend told me:Â* "Land in dirt, you won't get
hurt."Â* The idea being that a plowed farm field will most likely not
have rocks, holes, etc.Â* "Dry lakes" on the other hand, not so much
unless you're sure of the surface condition.Â* Refer back to the Soaring
calendar cover shot a couple of years back for the JS-1 bogged down on
the "dry lake".Â* That was about 15-20 miles south of Moriarty and
there's a good dirt/gravel runway within about 5 miles of that.

Flying the Stemme, I personally have to limit my XC flying to having a
paved runway within gliding distance at all times.Â* Sure I could land in
a lot of places safely, but I would not attempt (or at least would not
want) to take off from them.Â* The tips of the $10K carbon prop are too
close to the ground to risk gravel damage and there's no option to air
tow.Â* Oh yeah...Â* I don't have a trailer.

On 5/30/2019 2:17 AM, Ramy wrote:
Lots of great answers, so no much for me to add, and I’ll probably repeat some of what was already said.
Known airports are of course the safest option, but if you stick to only known airports, you will significantly handicap yourself and will actually land out more often.
Known fields are somewhat less safe since the field condition changes through the season, but are usually good options.
Unknown but good looking fields are almost as safe if you know what to look for, especially power lines, fences, slope, surface type etc.
The last in the list are unknown fields which looks like they will probably be landable, with risk of ground loop. These could be sonsidered only when the likelihood of landout is low (chances of finding lift are very high). As a rule of thumb, the less the chances to find lift the more conservative your options should be.

In David’s case, he found himself very low over unlandable terrain (4WD dirt roads in the mountains are unlandable) with no plan B, and nearly zero chance to find lift, and had to crash land. He now owns a glider with an FES

In 20 years of aggressive XC soaring I have well over hundred landouts, but less than 10 in fields, and less than 5 in unknowns fields. The worst damage I had was a gear collapse in a rough field (in an LS4 which are notorious for gear collapse) and very recently some belly scratches due to landing in a plowed field.
Well there was that winnemucca dry lake landing which wasn’t completely dry, but this is another story for another time, and over 20 years ago so don’t count, but yeah, beware of dry lakes which may not be dry...

Ramy


--
Dan, 5J

Sadly it's not the same in the USA.Â* I only personally know one CFI-G
who regularly flies XC and he doesn't instruct.

On 5/30/2019 4:27 AM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Wed, 29 May 2019 21:13:38 -0600, Dan Marotta wrote:

Thasnip

Our instructors do that fairly regularly - they're all XC pilots and will
be miles away if its a soarable day and they're not rostered to instruct.
Our ASK-21s are used on good days to take pre-solo students on XC flights
and we recently bought a Perkoz with exactly that sort of training in
mind.



--
Dan, 5J