"Kyle Boatright" wrote in message
. ..
In my local area, there are enough public and private fields that one is in
range 80% or more of the time if I'm above 5,000' AGL.

That makes me feel a little better about leaving the pattern. As the old
farts say, the question isn't "if?", but "when?" the engine will fail. I try
and stack the odds in my favor if the answer to the question is "now"...

Then I guess you don't fly out of a field that is under class C airspace.
We have to fly about five miles away from the field before we can climb above
1200 feet. There are no landing fields in that five miles. Even worse, that
means that all of the light plane traffic is concentrated in about 200' of
altitude, greatly increasing the chances of two (or more) planes trying to
occupy the same dab of airspace at the same time. FAA's reason for this
arrangement is to "increase safety".

Still, we seem to survive.

Vaughn