Selecting landout airports

And FWIW (in the almost-fergot-to-mention-it sense of things)...

On 5/26/2016 6:52 AM, akiley wrote:
Major snip...

I've also noticed from satellite views that there is often a grass parallel
area located at many asphalt strips, but no way of knowing if these are
landable.

Philosophically speaking, I've long considered airport landings - in a glider
and in the absence of 1st-hand and current knowledge of the field in question
- to be an "airport landout" by which I mean if the landing is on the runway,
it has a host of glider-unfriendly risks (just like every off-field landing)
with the sole exception of a known good surface (if powerplanes are actively
using it, of course; abandoned/little-used, "paved" strips don't count!).
Complacency can bite.

Furthermore, you doanwanna end up like a local pilot who landed out (some
years ago, now) a G-103 at the (nice, active, freshly upgraded) Longmont, CO,
A/P, located a whopping 8 or 9 air miles from our home field, and who decided
- for dodgy reasons likely having to do with "convenience for regular A/P
users" - to "use the grass" alongside the freshly re-concreted, very wide,
really long, main runway...and "busted the ship" by either hitting a
several-inch-high lip of a taxiway or groundlooping in the high grass (the
details have faded...).

Our local glider FBO/DPE (who went on the retrieve) was thoroughly
unimpressed, booming out the question, "Why'd you land in the grass when you
had this nice 7,000' long newly repaved runway right next to it???" Why indeed...

Bob W.