I think the castering tailwheel makes landing rollout much easier for new
students. It makes it possible to steer the ship after a less-than-straight
touchdown. That's one of the things to learn when graduading to a more
advanced ship: that you may not have much freedom to turn. Landing perfectly
straight is an extra demand on a new student.

We have a couple of L-13's and have never had a problem with breaking the
tailwheels. Earlier someone said that you should not push them backwards,
but we do it all the time. We are just careful when pushing up onto a runway
or road: take it slow as you get the wheel up.

wrote in message
oups.com...
"There is an improved
tailwheel on the new L-23's that is fixed and does not caster"

Yep. The new L23 we just bought has. It's a goddamn pain in the back
lifting the tail up to turn the glider around. Having someone sit in
the front seat helps. The CuNim club in Alberta has an L-13 with a
fixed tailwheel and a Grob type removable taildolly which was all
properly engineered as a Limited Supplemental Type Certificate. It
would be nice to have something like that on our L-23. Probably a
little expensive though.

The funny thing is we never had any trouble with the tailwheels on the
L-13's we've had but one of our L-23 with a castoring tailwheel had
it's tailwheel broken. The tail slammed into the ground after the
glider came to a stop, nose down, with the wheelbrake full on.