Ideally, an alternate would not be a short distance from your destination
anyway. After all, if the weather's too poor for landing at your
destination, often it will be at a nearby airport as well.

Not necessarily, IMHO. If the airport you are aiming for has high
minima (such as an NDB approach into the hills), and right nearby there
is an airport with low minima (such as an ILS), then under many weather
circumstances it is quite reasonable to use the neighboring airport as
an alternate.

OTOH, if the weather system is wide and threatens to possibly go low
(probably all over), then such a choice is... er... less optimal. You'd
want an airport (and the gas to get there) that is outside the weather
system.

The excercise of choosing a "legal" alternate has more to do with gas
than anything else. You need the gas to get there, and still fly almost
an hour at full cruise. Once you're in the air, and you actually =need=
an alternatative landing site, you can use any airport as that
alternative landing site, no matter what you filed in your flight plan
as a legal alternate, and no matter whether or not the airport is A-NA
on the charts. It just becomes an ordinary destination (albeit an
unplanned one)

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.