Oh, and the wheel at the front is to stop trainee pilots scraping all
the gel coat off if they get the landing wrong. (also this arrangement
makes ground handling for heavy two-seaters easier, but the details are
too much information).

Chris Reed wrote:
No one has yet mentioned the obvious (to glider pilots).

Gliders sometimes have to land in fields, and therefore we need to be
able to take the wings off easily.

Two main wheels would need to be mounted out on the wings somewhere,
given the wingspan of gliders. Thus the wings would be heavier, and the
wheels would make fitting the assembly into the trailer really difficult
(or a ludicrously wide trailer).

On top of that, modern gliders usually have retractable main wheels,
which would be horribly complex mounted in the wing.

So, a single main wheel (a) makes derigging and trailering easier, and
(b) is more easily made retractable.

Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe wrote:

First, I've been told, by someone that taught middle school, that
whoever said "there is no such thing as a stupid question" never
taught middle school... :-)

Second, I should confess up front that I don't fly or know that much
about gliders.

But... I was doing some virtual tire kicking over on the
wingsandwheels.com want ads and looking at a picture of a Grob 103
twin 3 Acro - thinking that looks like it could be fun - and it hit me
- this thing has three wheels. Now, I've seen other gliders with the
same arangement before, but this time it just struck me as odd.

As I understand it, the "traditional" arangement is one main wheel
near the CG plus one tail wheel. The idea being that one wheel has
half the weight and half the drag drag compared to the two main wheels
found on the typical powered airplane - right?

But on the Grob, I see three, count-em, three wheels. Same number as
the Cessna 120 I learned to fly in oh so many years ago. But! Instead
of putting two wheels side by side so the airplane can stand up by
itself (avoiding need for wing runners, wheels strapped to the wing to
move it from place to place, and whatever else comes from having the
wheel in the middle) this has all three wheels in a row. Seems to me
that this arrangement has all the disadvantages (weight and drag) but
none the advangages (able to stand up unaided) of having all those
wheels.

What's up with that?