Private airport or small field for landout?

On Saturday, May 30, 2020 at 12:34:22 PM UTC-7, Charles Ethridge wrote:
Thanks for all your responses.

Reading them over, my take on this is that there is no truly "safe" way to landout in fields or unknown private airports. By "safe" I mean safe for you AND for the glider. I'm not rich enough to afford to keep having a broken glider fixed.

This got me wondering about a couple of things though:

1. Is there an area in the USA where there is a gliderport where pilots fly lots of cross country and which, at certain times of the year also has large, safe fields to land along the known cross country routes? Since I'm semi-retired perhaps I could move there for a summer, just to get my badges and cross country experience.

2. What about the concept I read about (forgot where) about thermaling over a KNOWN landable airport until gaining enough altitude to reasonably get to the next known landable airport? That seems like it might be doable here in north-central Georgia, where there are so many decent uncontrolled airports.

Ben

The answer is actually pretty simple: you start out only flying cross country on the stronger days when you have an easy glide to known good airports or verified airstrips. Gradually you will build your confidence and will be willing to take more risks. The bottom line is, however, until you have actually landed in a field you will never be confident of your abilities to do so.

Part of the frustration of giving general advice in a forum like RAS somebody will nit-pick you to death. Like, are you expecting to fly gliders in Italy? REALLY?? So WTF does that have to do with what you are contemplating? Answer: NOTHING!

Tom