On Sep 9, 4:35*am, HoUdino wrote:
The #1 learning event that got me flying XC was getting in my car and
physically looking at every field I thought I might land in with
camera...slope, wind, obsticals, GPS coordinates, etc. *This greatly
reduced the fear of "landing out".

Absolutely.

All the pros know where all the good landing fields are. Usually
they've had to use them all a few times!

You don't even need to know all that many -- maybe every 15- 20 km or
so if you've usually flying around 3000 ft AGL like we are here.
Certainly every 10 km -- always having a known good field within 5 km
in front or of behind you -- is getting towards overkill.

If you're thermal flying then the usual reason for landouts is that
the day has died. In that case you can be pretty sure of being able to
final glide quite a way to a good field .. sniffing for that one last
thermal on the way of course.

If you're doing wave/ridge flying in high winds then there is a much
higher chance of getting "dumped" and losing height rapidly. If you're
doing glides from one ridge to another then you really want to know
some landable place close to the start of each ridge in case you get
there too low or you get there and it's simply not working.