At 23:36 28 May 2020, Jonathan St. Cloud

Any real world data? How many of you have broken a glider in a
plowed field? They can be very inviting and many are very good
landing sites, but know your area. I have both seen and worked in
plowed fields that I would not attempt to land in. And I have seen
some beautiful fields.

Jon, that is exactly the point - Real World - The real world is very
different in different places. We had a ton of broken gliders from
landing in plowed fields during the 1985 WGC in Italy. Over there
the soil is clay, and that summer was dry. The clay was so
compacted that the farmers used bulldozers to pull the plows
because the tractors weren't strong enough. The furrows were
sometimes a foot to 1.5 feet deep, and the clods that were tilled up
were large and like boulders. During practice, I landed in one that
had only 6" furrows, but was hard as brick. The jarring caused the
gear handle on my Discus-b to come out of the down detent, and
the gear collapsed, so I wound up sliding on my belly for a short
ways. Klaus Holighaus spent most of the night fixing the small
belly hole himself, and I flew the rest of the contest with a ~1ft
green spot on the belly. Dick Brandt made me a hard rubber wedge
to place in the gear handle track after the gear was lowered in order
to keep the gear handle from popping out again. Our coach, Walter
Neubert, had loaned his brand new ASW-20 to Henri Stouffs of
Belgium. Hernri absolutely totaled it out landing in a plowed field
with deeper furrows and bigger clods. The damage list went on and
on. The bottom line is that not all plowed fields are alike or
landable. It all depends on the the local area, the kind of soil, the
moisture content, the farming methods, the wx, etc. To try and
give someone universal advice that all plowed fields are good off
field landing options is just being way too short sighted for me.
You have to know the local agriculture at the time of year that you
are flying, and then qualify the off field landing options.

RO