On Jul 1, 5:55*am, wrote:
snip

Contrary to much of the advice proferred here, I think you need to
concentrate on local flights and build up your skill levels before
attempting any XC flights. Flying XC assumes that you ALREADY have the
fundamental soaring skills down pat, and can devote a large part of
your attention on things flight planning, weather prediction, route
planning, landout monitoring, etc.

I'm not sure what the state of play in the US is, but at my club and I
suspect all others in the UK, we have to have our Bronze badge plus XC
endorsement before flying other than locally (e.g. attempting Silver
distance). Of course an outlanding is still a possibility but they
don't happen often and there is a body of knowledge about where the
best fields are (given the state of the crops) which can and should be
tapped.