Private airport or small field for landout?

Here in the Northeast, I've had good luck with "land in hay, make your day". Ideal is recently mown and/or raked. as the mowers and tedders/rakes are only used in hospitable terrain. Obviously, baled but not collected is a problem. Lots of fields here have the hay baled and stacked/stored alongside the field, including the large, round bales wrapped in white plastic that look like huge marshmallows. When you see that, it's a reasonable bet that the field is kept in hay and should be landable.

One of my favorite landouts happened near Seneca lake where I was hanging on in weak lift between 800 and 1000 feet while the farmer cut my "airport" as I was grinding away. It was a nice, 2000 foot field with fairly tall grass, and when I got there the first pass was probably only a semi-span wide. After 2 passes I was pretty sure it was plenty wide, and by the time I was ready to land he was halfway through pass #3.

He was surprised to find an "airplane" in his field when he turned around to start pass #4, but he warmed up when I offered to help with some of the other chores while I waited for crew. He finished up and met me at the barn where he opened the fridge stocked with Yeungling. I sent him an SSA calendar for Christmas, and we got a nice card from him for several years after that.

P3



on Wednesday, May 27, 2020 at 10:44:14 PM UTC-4, George Haeh wrote:
"Land in the dirt, you won't get hurt" has, so far, worked well for me.

Farmers don't get worked up about crop damage when it's not even an inch high.

With private strips, width can be a deal/glider breaker. I passed up one in the book because the stated width looked a tight squeeze. And I once saw the green (corn) stains on the tips of an 18m self launcher. The owner had the look of a narrow escape on him. The private strips I have used were known to my local club as wide enough for gliders. The owners have been hospitable and happy to talk airplanes. There's the rare one that won't allow aerotow retrieve because of liability considerations.

You can compare the width to power pole spacing.

No matter how hard you study the local fields and airports, the day will likely come when you have to evaluate fields from the air. It's been recommended for aspiring XC pilots to evaluate possible fields from the air and drive over for a look.

Many folks who have their own landing strip will, if asked, not give you permission to land there. This is to protect themselves from legal liability.. The question to ask is something like "If a glider gets low and must land on your field, would you as the field owner cause a problem for the pilot?" Most private landing strip owners are helpful and friendly to glider pilots who land there, even if their field is listed as restricted or private..

On Monday, May 25, 2020 at 5:35:28 PM UTC-4, Charles Ethridge wrote:
Hi all.

I'm a former cfi-i/mei and commercial glider pilot, but I've never gone cross-country in my PW-5 glider. Training up for it though. A question:

If you are in an area where the fields are small, but there are several private airfields around, which should be your priority?

Seems to me that the private airport would be safer, assuming you have enough altitude to overfly it. Also I notice that my (new) Oudie2 shows all the private airstrips around as potential landout spots.

Will you get in trouble (legal or financial) if you have to landout at a private airport (assuming you aren't declaring an emergency, of course)?

Ben

On Friday, May 29, 2020 at 12:46:15 PM UTC-7, Hal 1L wrote:
Many folks who have their own landing strip will, if asked, not give you permission to land there. This is to protect themselves from legal liability. The question to ask is something like "If a glider gets low and must land on your field, would you as the field owner cause a problem for the pilot?" Most private landing strip owners are helpful and friendly to glider pilots who land there, even if their field is listed as restricted or private.

On Monday, May 25, 2020 at 5:35:28 PM UTC-4, Charles Ethridge wrote:
Hi all.

I'm a former cfi-i/mei and commercial glider pilot, but I've never gone cross-country in my PW-5 glider. Training up for it though. A question:

If you are in an area where the fields are small, but there are several private airfields around, which should be your priority?

Seems to me that the private airport would be safer, assuming you have enough altitude to overfly it. Also I notice that my (new) Oudie2 shows all the private airstrips around as potential landout spots.

Will you get in trouble (legal or financial) if you have to landout at a private airport (assuming you aren't declaring an emergency, of course)?

Ben

Not all private strips are friendly as anyone that has landed at Pala airport in Southern CA can attest. I landed a helicopter there once to check a chip light, holly hell, you would have thought a black man landed there. Security car, with lights flashing, siren wailing came scratching to a halt, too close for comfort. They demanded to know why I was there, how soon I could leave and why I flew a non-standard pattern. I calmly explained that: a) I was there because of a chip light; b) I would be gone as soon as I checked the chip light and verified it was safe to fly; and c) helicopters are supposed to avoid the flow of fixed wing traffic. I checked the chip detector, while another security guard came over to make me more uncomfortable. He loudly proclaimed "Those Goddamn Marine helicopters land here occasionally and we just hate that." I responded "so, did you just want them to die?" As I was getting back in the bird and going through the start up, yet another car with flashing lights comes up and said "wait here the president is coming", I responded "the president of the United States?", "no the president of the resort". That ****ed me off! I said, "great, if he is here in the next two minutes and can speak over the downwash." As I lifted off I could see yet another two security cars with full lights, running down the length of the runway to reach me. I assumed those cars contained rtes president and entourage. That seemed like a good direction to get my speed up in ground effect at about three feet AGL. Filed a NASA report, and put a black x by that airport in my mind. I have never experienced so much hate towards an aviator who just needed a place to check a problem. Never heard from them again but always made sure to do a non-standard approach and simulated touchdown every time I was in the hood. I was hoping to de-sensitize them to foreign aircraft and as a younger man, I behaved differently than now.

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

Charles, please don’t take the wrong perspective from our posts. Its not true to say there is no safe way to fly xc and that whatever you do carries a high chance of damage to yourself and-or your ship. That is simply not true.

If you do as recommended in learning to land your ship very efficiently, minimum and exact speed control, (your PW can land as short as our 1-26’s, Ive seen it done at the 1-26 Championship/Low Performance contest last year),AND pick routes which have a generous supply of open fields, you can very safely do lots of xc. You don’t need big wings and super high performance ships. In fact, a very good argument can be made that the small, slower speed ships are easier and safer to fly xc given that the availability of landable fields for us is much greater than the 18-20 meter ships.

As for an area where you can climb high enough to go from airport to airport, thats a pretty tall order for a low performance ship. The area you fly around central georgia is very landout-field friendly. You can easily work out a few courses starting with google earth, picking potential landout fields spaced if you like every 10 or even down to 5 mile spacing. Then take a weekend drive and check them out from the ground or get a power plane buddy and fly the route checking them out. Easy piesy, absolutely safe.

If you want to go somewhere to fly xc with an abundance of humongous landable fields, Sunflower aerodrome in KS would be a fine place, or Lawrenceburg IL.

I think you simply need to do a little homework finding out how far you can fly given 2,000 ft of altitude, plan a few simple triangles, practice your short field/spot landing skills, then go for it. You can over think this thing to the point where you end up too frightened to ever go anywhere. Many of us have had first xc/landout jitters but went, did a flight, maybe landed out successfully. And afterwards realized it not such a big scary deal after all.
Dan

On Sat, 30 May 2020 15:25:15 -0700, agcatflyr wrote:

Charles, please don’t take the wrong perspective from our posts. Its not
true to say there is no safe way to fly xc and that whatever you do
carries a high chance of damage to yourself and-or your ship. That is
simply not true.

If you do as recommended in learning to land your ship very efficiently,
minimum and exact speed control, (your PW can land as short as our
1-26’s, Ive seen it done at the 1-26 Championship/Low Performance
contest last year),AND pick routes which have a generous supply of open
fields, you can very safely do lots of xc. You don’t need big wings and
super high performance ships. In fact, a very good argument can be made
that the small, slower speed ships are easier and safer to fly xc given
that the availability of landable fields for us is much greater than
the 18-20 meter ships.

As for an area where you can climb high enough to go from airport to
airport, thats a pretty tall order for a low performance ship. The area
you fly around central georgia is very landout-field friendly. You can
easily work out a few courses starting with google earth, picking
potential landout fields spaced if you like every 10 or even down to 5
mile spacing. Then take a weekend drive and check them out from the
ground or get a power plane buddy and fly the route checking them out.
Easy piesy, absolutely safe.

If you want to go somewhere to fly xc with an abundance of humongous
landable fields, Sunflower aerodrome in KS would be a fine place, or
Lawrenceburg IL.

I think you simply need to do a little homework finding out how far you
can fly given 2,000 ft of altitude, plan a few simple triangles,
practice your short field/spot landing skills, then go for it. You can
over think this thing to the point where you end up too frightened to
ever go anywhere. Many of us have had first xc/landout jitters but went,
did a flight, maybe landed out successfully. And afterwards realized it
not such a big scary deal after all.
Dan

Another way that might work for you is to do the height and duration legs
of silver C first: both can be done with local flying and should be
useful in convincing yourself that you CAN climb more than 3270 ft above
release height and that you can stay up for 5 hours. Then think about
setting a self-declared task of making a flight of more than 50km ending
at a known landable airfield. If you can set a 50km flight over mostly-
landable country and downwind as well, so much the better, and if you've
never visited the destination field that doesn't matter - in fact you'll
learn more if you haven't seen it but just been told is good.

This is exactly how Silver C was done on my club. I did the height and
duration legs soaring locally and then, after getting instructor signoffs
for field selection, field landing practise, and navigation (without GPS
- it was that long ago) I was told to map-read my way to a gliding club
about 65 km away that I had never visited, and land there so I got useful
practise landing at a previously unknown airfield - in fact I sat in a
thermal off to one side to work out the traffic pattern, joined the
circuit and landed there to be offered congratulations and a beer.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

You don't need to climb high enough to reach the next field.Â* A good way
to fly early cross country is to climb and go out on course. Keep the
field you left within reach as you climb and travel to the next field.Â*
When the next field is in reach, you can let go of the previous field
and proceed.Â* Repeat the process from field to field and before long,
you'll be stretching your wings.

Oh, and read Helmut Reichmann's book, "Streckensegelflug" (I hope I
spelled that correctly).Â* It translates to "Cross-Country Gliding". The
best book on soaring that I've ever read.

On 5/30/2020 4:48 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Sat, 30 May 2020 15:25:15 -0700, agcatflyr wrote:

Charles, please don’t take the wrong perspective from our posts. Its not
true to say there is no safe way to fly xc and that whatever you do
carries a high chance of damage to yourself and-or your ship. That is
simply not true.

If you do as recommended in learning to land your ship very efficiently,
minimum and exact speed control, (your PW can land as short as our
1-26’s, Ive seen it done at the 1-26 Championship/Low Performance
contest last year),AND pick routes which have a generous supply of open
fields, you can very safely do lots of xc. You don’t need big wings and
super high performance ships. In fact, a very good argument can be made
that the small, slower speed ships are easier and safer to fly xc given
that the availability of landable fields for us is much greater than
the 18-20 meter ships.

As for an area where you can climb high enough to go from airport to
airport, thats a pretty tall order for a low performance ship. The area
you fly around central georgia is very landout-field friendly. You can
easily work out a few courses starting with google earth, picking
potential landout fields spaced if you like every 10 or even down to 5
mile spacing. Then take a weekend drive and check them out from the
ground or get a power plane buddy and fly the route checking them out.
Easy piesy, absolutely safe.

If you want to go somewhere to fly xc with an abundance of humongous
landable fields, Sunflower aerodrome in KS would be a fine place, or
Lawrenceburg IL.

I think you simply need to do a little homework finding out how far you
can fly given 2,000 ft of altitude, plan a few simple triangles,
practice your short field/spot landing skills, then go for it. You can
over think this thing to the point where you end up too frightened to
ever go anywhere. Many of us have had first xc/landout jitters but went,
did a flight, maybe landed out successfully. And afterwards realized it
not such a big scary deal after all.
Dan

Another way that might work for you is to do the height and duration legs
of silver C first: both can be done with local flying and should be
useful in convincing yourself that you CAN climb more than 3270 ft above
release height and that you can stay up for 5 hours. Then think about
setting a self-declared task of making a flight of more than 50km ending
at a known landable airfield. If you can set a 50km flight over mostly-
landable country and downwind as well, so much the better, and if you've
never visited the destination field that doesn't matter - in fact you'll
learn more if you haven't seen it but just been told is good.

This is exactly how Silver C was done on my club. I did the height and
duration legs soaring locally and then, after getting instructor signoffs
for field selection, field landing practise, and navigation (without GPS
- it was that long ago) I was told to map-read my way to a gliding club
about 65 km away that I had never visited, and land there so I got useful
practise landing at a previously unknown airfield - in fact I sat in a
thermal off to one side to work out the traffic pattern, joined the
circuit and landed there to be offered congratulations and a beer.



--
Dan, 5J

On Sunday, May 31, 2020 at 12:29:21 AM UTC-4, Dan Marotta wrote:
You don't need to climb high enough to reach the next field.Â* A good way
to fly early cross country is to climb and go out on course. Keep the
field you left within reach as you climb and travel to the next field.Â*
When the next field is in reach, you can let go of the previous field
and proceed.Â* Repeat the process from field to field and before long,
you'll be stretching your wings.

Oh, and read Helmut Reichmann's book, "Streckensegelflug" (I hope I
spelled that correctly).Â* It translates to "Cross-Country Gliding". The
best book on soaring that I've ever read.
--
Dan, 5J

Good point!

I just bought Reichmann's book (English version).

Ben

Charles Ethridge wrote on 5/30/2020 12:34 PM:
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

What books have you read about XC flying?

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

On Saturday, May 30, 2020 at 6:38:56 PM UTC-4, Eric Greenwell wrote:

What books have you read about XC flying?

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)

Advanced Soaring Made Easy - Bernard Eckey
After Solo - Thomas Knauff
The Soaring Engine - G Dale
Landing Out - The Final Four Minutes - Bob Wander
Winning - George Moffat
That great landout booklet by Kai Gersten that I can't find on the internet anymore...

Just bought Reichmann's Cross-Country Soaring, so starting on that now.

Ben