Hey! Don't they put gas guages on those things? I mean, wouldn't he have noticed the needle starting to point down to that dread "E" and maybe put in a call to the nearest county airport? If there WAS no gas guage, I'd think he would do like I used to do when I had an old beater car with a broken gas guage. "Let's see, I just put in 10 gallons of gas. This old clunker gets 15mpg, so I'm set for 150 miles". I'd then make a note of the odometer reading, add 150 to that, and tape the mileage estimate to my dash, after subtracting 5 miles for good luck. When I hit 145 miles, I knew it was time to start looking for a Conoco sign.
And yeah, while he wasn't in a glider, he must have still had a certain amount of momentum going for him, and its my understanding that when you land, you put the plane into a brief stall, anyhow, so he must have had a couple of miles to pick out his landing spot. "Highway? Ummm, maybe not. Wouldn't want to land on a little old lady out for a Sunday drive. Dirt road? Perfect! Less chance of an encounter with an automobile and less chance of damaging the plane. I'll take it!"
But what do I know? I'm just a dumb cowgirl.
