Cross Country the main focus of soaring?

In article ,
Stefan wrote:
Bert Willing wrote:

Landing on an airfield is not outlanding. What we refer to as outlanding
typically in Europe is 1000ft (if lucky) of unknown pasture.

I just tried to remember when an outlanding field I had to use actually
offered 1000 ft. Can't think of one. But then, this is the reason that
in our club, "each landing is a precision landing", no matter how
generous the runway might be. The precicion we require at our annual
check flight is touching down and coming to a full stop within a
predefined area of 150m.

It's really struck home to me the difference between stall speeds
of various aircraft and the importance of headwind. With a recent
student we did precision landings with tail and headwind,
only 5-10 knot difference, and it was startling to him
the huge difference.

And the 1-26 with me at 160# in it? Talk about a short
landing! With 5-10 knots on the nose, 50 feet isn't hard to
muster.

The hardest thing for me has always been determining wind direction
when in an unfamiliar area. With no vegetation or water or
dust or flags, etc., I have a real hard time doing it without
GPS or a wind circle (ground ref).

The effects of wind were probably the biggest new surprise to
me as a transition pilot to gliders. And I can see how always practicing
precision landings into a known headwind with known obstacles could
weaken my judgement skills for the (hope I never do it) outlanding.


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Mark J. Boyd