Chip
I heard a really useful axiom awhile back. It was in an interview of one of the founding engineers of the X-plane/X15 program. When questioned about the differences between the approach they took during those heated-space/aviation race days of the cold war and the more cerebral go slow pace of later test flying. This guy called what they did earlier as “Educated Courage”, meaning, yes they were involved in risky business but they entered those risks thoughtfully with preparation and built in contingencies.

It does take a level of courage needed in the pursuit of certain goals, in our case that being xc or contest flying. Without courage and just operating from “thoughtfulness” and a guy could consider venturing off anywhere beyond gliding distance of home as foolhardy. Or flying in a gaggle with 10 other guys all flying within a few hundred feet of each other sounds like a recipe for trouble. But when thoughtful preparation, common sense precautions and contingencies are joined up with a measure of courage, great things, enjoyment, and accomplishment can result.

I have gone thru my big dollar high performance phase of soaring, but have jumped into a different pond of challenge, namely, trying to do great things in low performance machines. In order to do this, I have to ask things of my bird and my own abilities way beyond the norm, not having the L/D to get me free of trouble areas etc. As a result, it takes gobbs of courage, just ask Daniel Sazhin or Ron Schwartz who ran the ridges in their
1-26’s to put up some of the first few 1000k 1-26 flights. Without courage they could never have even gotten started.
But given the need for courage, what comes along with it is the need for a whole bunch of Thoughtfulness. Read study, knowledge gained from numerous failed attempts, having well defined and adhered-to personal minimums. I spend way more energy and flight time working on the skills needed to safely stretch into this challenging low performance flying than I do one the record attempts. In my case it involves lots and lots of low level and weak wx flying, and very short small off field landing simulation. This is all done to perfect and sharpen my skills, skills that are essential for reaching my goals. In three years of pursuing low performance records, I have made over 20 off field landings. Not airports or grass strips, but actual farm fields, roads, unoccupied parking lots etc. Have I learned things? Absolutely. Was I ever scared, absolutely not. Concerned? Yes, but never fearing for life or limb. In it all I have not hurt my bird in any way, a few scraps on the fusalage bottom is all.

Put the package together and you can have success without falling either into the “chicken little” syndrome or the other end of the spectrum, namely foolhardy confidence.

FWIW
Dan