On Wednesday, 29 November 2017 07:06:43 UTC+2, Jeff Morgan wrote:
On Friday, November 24, 2017 at 3:40:55 PM UTC-7, Andreas Maurer wrote:

I still wonder why flaps are demonized that often - they are in no way
hard to operate or need special skills (nor do they separate the boys
from the men).

On the contrary, one might add that the later the ship, the easier and
less prone to error the flaps are to handle.

Upon further reflection, my initial resistance to flaps doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. My other hobbies get me out into the back country of Arizona so I know that fields that appear to be flat are anything but smooth. Five knots lower approach speed is a lot less kinetic energy. A good thing (regardless of top end speed).

It has occurred to me that I should be looking at another factor more carefully: stability and ease of flying. My DG 100 was easy and fun. OTOH, the club's Standard Cirrus always needed attention and was much less fun to fly.

At work I have to learn whatever aircraft my employer uses. If I am going to spend $80K on a hobby, I don't want to feel like I am riding a razor blade (in terms of stability) every flight.

Certain Standard Class ships have great reputations this way. How about the top flapped ships, namely the Ventus 2 and ASW-27 for stability?

All modern gliders are more stable than older gliders up to early 90's. V2, 27, D2, LS8 are all extremely pleasant to fly and as stable as gliders get (meaning mostly neutral stability, not stable in true sense). You will find no difference in stability between 15m and std. class gliders. Most pleasant (for me light, sensitive and effective controls with stability) glider I've flown is LS8 with 15m tips, Ventus-2 (15m) coming very close. Control harmony of std. class ship is theoretically better because you can optimize the tail for on wing configuration, but in 15m glider you have as many wings as you have flap settings and tail is compromise for everything. Flaps have other merits (acceleration, lower min. speed).