Narrative:

I was first concerned about my lack of fuel as I was passing ZZZ. But when I looked at both fuel gauges; I thought that I had a good 6 or 7 gallons of fuel and thought that I really had enough fuel to get to my destination. However; when I flipped back to the opposite tank it went dry in about 30 seconds. At that point I still thought I was ok; but in this plane the indicators gave me only about half of the fuel I had anticipated. At this point I was beyond ZZZ and asked ATC to be rerouted to ZZZ1; which was closer than [intended destination]. I was at about 4;000 feet when I suffered fuel exhaustion. I used the throttle to give me a few more turns with power; but I could see that I wasn't going to be able to get to the field. As I was trained well by the civil air patrol; I looked for a safe place to land. I saw a green field 1.3 miles north and a bit west and I headed for it and landed both myself and the plane safely.I have been flying complex high performance aircraft for almost all of my 50 years of flying. I did not realize it until too late that this machine; great flying as it is; will not stretch fuel and get the speed that my old cessna 210A did. I always file an IFR flight plan usually a half day early and then check again before I take off on this cross country flight. My main concern that morning was getting out of the cold front and into better weather. Everything was going along fine until I hit a strong headwind at about the [state] border. Even then; I did not think of going into [an alternate] and at ZZZ I convinced myself I had enough fuel. That was my undoing! I have thought of little else but why I did this and I have taught school and preached safety and as a clergyman I have 'clay feet.'

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: PA28 pilot reported fuel starvation and landing aircraft in a field.

Narrative: I was first concerned about my lack of fuel as I was passing ZZZ. But when I looked at both fuel gauges; I thought that I had a good 6 or 7 gallons of fuel and thought that I really had enough fuel to get to my destination. However; when I flipped back to the opposite tank it went dry in about 30 seconds. At that point I still thought I was OK; but in this plane the indicators gave me only about half of the fuel I had anticipated. At this point I was beyond ZZZ and asked ATC to be rerouted to ZZZ1; which was closer than [intended destination]. I was at about 4;000 feet when I suffered fuel exhaustion. I used the throttle to give me a few more turns with power; but I could see that I wasn't going to be able to get to the field. As I was trained well by the Civil Air Patrol; I looked for a safe place to land. I saw a green field 1.3 miles north and a bit west and I headed for it and landed both myself and the plane safely.I have been flying complex high performance aircraft for almost all of my 50 years of flying. I did not realize it until too late that this machine; great flying as it is; will not stretch fuel and get the speed that my old Cessna 210A did. I always file an IFR flight plan usually a half day early and then check again before I take off on this cross country flight. My main concern that morning was getting out of the cold front and into better weather. Everything was going along fine until I hit a strong headwind at about the [state] border. Even then; I did not think of going into [an alternate] and at ZZZ I convinced myself I had enough fuel. That was my undoing! I have thought of little else but why I did this and I have taught school and preached safety and as a clergyman I have 'clay feet.'

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.