... The hand wringing about flaps is amusing. Every airplane trainer
these days has flaps - and, of course, an engine to manage. Come to
think of it, gliders are probably the only aircraft still manufactured
without flaps.

I've wondered about that too. I'd never flown a flapped ship until I
bought one. It didn't seem to be very complicated at the time, and
still doesn't.


I'll "third that". And in gliders, most of the flap-based hand wringing
concerns *only* camber-changing flaps, not large-deflection landing flaps
(simply because there are very few of the latter, relative to the glider
population as a whole). As Alice might say, "Curioser and curioser."

I transitioned from a 1-26 to a large deflection landing flapped glider 1975,
with ~125 total hours (all glider), and zero instructional hours in a flapped
ship of any sort (unavailable to me then/there). Yeah, I did have theoretical
knowledge of flap-effects on a wing's lift & drag curves as functions of angle
of attack, and yeah, I did mentally prepare myself, but the actual initial
flight/landing was strictly a non-event in terms of "flap-use-trauma". In the
event, I liked large deflection landing flaps so much that I never again owned
a single seat glider without 'em.

Further evidence that how a person thinks, matters?

Bob W.