On Thursday, April 7, 2016 at 1:36:03 PM UTC-7, wrote:
For me it is a risk vs. reward - we know the ultimate risk..... the reward is ???? (there are no chicks, money or sponsorship's) - so I guess the reward is having a tale to tell.

For those of us who have no crew, the reward can be not spending the night in a field, something which I've done more than once.

The problem here is that off-field-landings are not something that can be realistically taught, particularly in mountainous areas like I often fly in. Some places will provide training in the form of having an instructor talk you through landing in a known unobstructed field large enough to aerotow from afterwards. That is not the sort of field you'll always end up in when you are on your own. So, you end up listening to advice from instructors (who may or may not have ever landed in a field), more "experienced" pilots (who may have gotten into bad habits), reading books, or r.a.s. (there are very experienced and sensible pilots posting here, you have to recognize which ones, though). Oddly enough, in one club I belonged to, just about every time a club glider was broken in a field, a club instructor was onboard.

Do listen to those with local knowledge that know the kinds of issues and obstructions that you are likely encounter, things like how recognize if a field is long enough and which way it may be sloping, how to determine wind direction near ground level, how to recognize where wires and fences may be, what kind of irrigation equipment might be present, how to recognize the different local crops and how tall they are likely to be at that time of year, what to do if animals are present, whether dry lakes are really dry, etc. In the end, though, you really are on your own once you start going cross-country. Each pilot has to develop their own techniques and change them as experience teaches.

Personally, I've landed in actual fields perhaps 20 times in 25+ years of XC flying, and the most damage I've done (so far) is scuffed up the underside of the nose when the field turns out to be soft (I've done more damage landing at airports, but I do that 30X more often). I've always circled a field I'm planning to land in at least twice, looking for things I don't like, and have several times switched to an alternate field, or switched to approaching from a different direction, when I've spotted obstructions. Also, under 1000 ft AGL I'm checking airspeed every few seconds, as in mountainous terrain it's easy to get fooled into flying too slow. I make sure I'm very comfortable slipping close to the ground in any glider before I go cross-country in it (or better yet, have a glider with good drag producing flaps), as I like to make high circular approaches into fields, and keep the airspeed at approach speed or higher.

And, yes, I've climbed away a few times with the gear down from what would normally be a high turn from base to final, but I don't like sleeping in fields. Has worked for me, may not work for anyone else...

Marc