nimbusgb wrote:

Some intervening questions/comments snipped...

A landing at a strange airfield is just that! Any resemblance to an
'outlanding' is nothing more than coincidental!
If you are flying 'airfield' to 'airfield' you know that there is
going to be a runway and decent approaches you dont have to worry
about things like ........

Field selection, orientation, slope, surface type, crops and height of
crop, livestock in the field and yes approaches. Also it may not be
big enough so now what! Options and a 'plan B'

One's OFL options obviously vary by locale. The closest I've come to
post-landing hypothermia was on a paved airport, in July, w. a
dust-blowing wind at sunset. Rather than use my cockpit, an unlocked
fuel truck was my chosen windbreak. No traffic (air or ground) at the
field for hours...until the local constabulary arrived as my crew and I
were struggling to remove wings in 35+ knot winds. (He didn't help.)

My point was/is that - riskwise - landouts at airports - at least in the
western U.S. - are really not very far from landouts in fields, and to
assume otherwise is to blandly risk bitter disappointment, and perhaps
an unnecessarily broken glider.

For the record, the worst crosswind I've ever had to deal with was on a
paved runway. Sometimes an OFL may be the discretion part of valor.

We're in complete agreement that one should always have a Plan B (and C
& D under development) until the final field is selected.
- - - - - -

Then there's post landing safety, what happens if you stuff it into an
unseen obstruction in a remote field, will someone find you and/or the
wreckage. Communications? There may be no one about for miles and the
cell phone coverage could be lousy. Security, what happens to your
ship when you walk out?

How do you get the ship out? Access for car and trailer. Do the crew
even know where you are?

Your own well being? I have been in fields for up to 6 hours without a
roll of toilet paper - no problem at an airfield but it nearly cost me
a sectional
Water? Shelter? What about protection for self and ship from the hail
or electrical storm that was about to wash you out of the sky?

Ok so a lot of this is not a problem in the UK where the nearest
village is usually no more than a couple of miles away but in some
places I have flown they are very real considerations.

Indeed, such considerations are very real in much of the world where I
regularly soar. That noted, I stand by my previous allegation(s).
Maybe one day I'll even purchase a cell phone.

I - rightly or wrongly - assume every glider pilot is prepared in some
measure for post-landing ground conditions short of a life-threatening
emergency. (I'd argue it's impossible to prepare for every emergency,
and any approach reasonable to the PIC is fine w. me [and my
wife]...even if it proves insufficient. No one forces us into our
cockpits, after all. Further, most beginners aren't soaring during
conditions conducive to routinely beyond-the-norm risk of life...at
least not in my US-centric experience.) In any event, I suspect we
agree the considerations you correctly mention are not really THE
primary ones of any lowish-experience soaring pilot concerned about the
mechanics of OFLs (in which way I took the OP's post).
- - - - - -

The pilot stress level are considerably more going into a 'field'!

Maybe I'm abbie-normal, but I consider strange-airport landings not much
less stressful than OFL's...and in (say) the agricultural bits of the
Texas panhandle typically *more* so. In any event, I'm not a fan of
suggesting to lowish-time OFL-wannabes that airport-landings can be
approached with the same casual comfort factor their home-airport
landings are. Just me, perhaps...

Regards,
Bob - unabashed (20 OFLs') weenie - W.