On Tuesday, May 26, 2020 at 10:43:27 AM UTC-4, 6PK wrote:
On Monday, May 25, 2020 at 2:35:28 PM UTC-7, Charles Ethridge wrote:
Hi all.

I'm a former cfi-i/mei and commercial glider pilot, but I've never gone cross-country in my PW-5 glider. Training up for it though. A question:

If you are in an area where the fields are small, but there are several private airfields around, which should be your priority?

Seems to me that the private airport would be safer, assuming you have enough altitude to overfly it. Also I notice that my (new) Oudie2 shows all the private airstrips around as potential landout spots.

Will you get in trouble (legal or financial) if you have to landout at a private airport (assuming you aren't declaring an emergency, of course)?

Ben

No substitute for setting foot on any possible landing area (open fields or private airports) first prior to considering it safe other than PUBLISHED PUBLIC airports...period

You have to be careful with public use airports, as well. You even have to be careful with notams.

A few years ago I checked notams on an early Saturday morning, there was over a page of them for Morrisville, VT. VASIs out of service (x2), runway lights out of service, taxiway lights out of service, runway end identifier lights out of service (x2), beacon out of service, on and on and ON. What do I care about any of that stuff? Later that afternoon as MVL came into view, I was astonished -- the freaking runway was GONE. Pulverised. Carted away. Big equipment all over the place. That evening I looked at Notams again. The significant bit was hiding in the middle of that page and a half of useless text. It was the shortest notam of the bunch. "arpt clsd". And I missed it. No serious concern in this case, there are landable fields in the area.

Any time you glide to a location that has only one place to land, you put yourself at heightened risk. Try not to do that unless you have known current, good intel. Arriving over the only good place to land within reach, then suddenly discovering that it isn't the good place to land you thought... is the wrong kind of exciting.

T8