Your First Land Out

It was the first competition flying my 20.5m LAK 12 in the Club Class (severely handicapped). Flew too fast between thermals trying to keep up with the 15m gliders instead of flying to my gliders strengths. So landed up 8km short. Selected my field and remembered the advice from my instructor who said: "for your first land out you select the largest field and land in the middle, the second land out you land close to the gate". Now the LAK 12 is a heavy glider - and the trailer is huge. So I selected the large field and identified what I thought was the gate and access into the field over a railway line. Put the glider down exactly where I wanted. Walked to the edge of the field and realised the perimeter road was on the other side of the fence. The gate by the railway line had a huge padlock on it. There was no way of getting the trailer anywhere near the glider. In the end, the glider had to be towed the entire length of the field because the actual access gate was the opposite end from where I had landed.