Reserve altitude

Reserve alt. is less and less helpful the farther out you are. Glide ratio will become the dominant factor when you are 25 miles out.

With Oudie, I tend to do the following:

First, make sure your ship's actual performance comes close to what the polar says. You can adjust (degrade) it by flying a final glide on a still air day and using the "bugs" setting. Fly the correct STF and watch your arrival altitude. if it starts to drop, your glide ratio is worse than the Oudie thinks- add in a few points of bugs and continue doing this until arrival altitude remains more or less constant over 5 minutes. As an example, I always set "bugs" to 6% in my ship.

I set my safety height to 1500'. Your milage may vary, but I like flying the pattern a bit higher/faster anyway. You can use the arrival alt. to plan your exit from your final climb. Once you have climbed 0-500' above final glide, leave the thermal (YMMV) and head home. Make sure your MCCready is set to what you want FIRST though, as it will effect your glide slope.

Set up the Oudie to display both your current L/D and required L/D to your target. No matter how far out you are, this will tell you if you are going to make it home, IF conditions remain constant (current L/D required L/D)

I also like to set the Oudie to display required L/D to each airport on the map. That way I can tell at a glance what is reachable and how challenging it might be to get there, based on my current L/D.

Everyone has a different way of thinking about all this. I am just sharing what works for me.

Matt H