Flaps/No flaps...practical difference??

Having flown a lot both ASW20 and D2, I would not try to land one glider
in a place I would not land the other as well.

Ditto - ASW20, Discus 2 and Ventus 2bx experience under my belt. I have
never felt there was a place I could land one of the flapped ships and not
the D2.

(although the "Jesus" flap setting of the earlier ASW 20s was
interesting!)

Captain Obvious here (maybe)...

There's a world of difference between 'mere' camber-changing flaps (with or
without a 'landing' position) and large-deflection landing-flaps in terms of
steepest-glide-angle at approach-speed, and reduced (compared to unflapped
ships of equal span) stall speed, everything else being equal (which of course
it ain't). The devil's in the details.

Yeah, likely the main benefit of stalling-speed-reduction occurs somewhere
around (say) 30-ish degrees of flap deflection, beyond which the remaining
aerodynamic effect is pretty much additional drag, and yeah, manufacturers of
'flapped ships (w/o large deflection capability)' almost certainly optimize
such designs (and their landing spoilers) so that the *primary* purpose of the
flaps is to maximize soaring-performance-range for some design-targeted span
(and not maximize short-field capability), and hence == when considering
*these* sorts of flapped designs == there's arguably little
landing-capability difference between flapped and unflapped ships.

But to suppose that's true for *all* flapped designs (i.e. those w.
large-deflection landing flaps, e.g. some early versions of ASW 20s, pre-D
versions of PIK-20s, and a few, semi-rare (even in the U.S.; likely even more
rare in EASA-land) U.S. designs (Nugget, SGS 1-35, Zuni, many older HPs,
etc.)), is incorrect. Depending on the ship, *seriously* incorrect.

Most U.S. pilots w. 1-26 experience would likely agree no other glider would
be their first choice for landing in a small/approach-obstructed field. I
would, too, but for the HP-14 I flew for several hundred hours, more or less
immediately after my 1-26 time. The Zuni in which I have most of my
flapped-ship time, not so much, though its actual touchdown speed is (thanks
to its flaps) lower than all other 15-meter span glass ships with which I have
observational experience since ~1980.

Reiterating...the devil is in the details in the case of 'flaps.' All flaps
aren't the same - not by a long stretch. I chose large-deflection
landing-flapped ships for all my single-seaters, post-1-26, exactly for this
reason...and continue to believe they're something of a 'lost religious war'
in soaring-land.

Point being, anyone seriously claiming 'there's no practical difference in
landing capability' between flapped and unflapped gliders is either genuinely
ignorant, or 'discussionally choosing' to ignore the very real additional
landing-capabilities associated with large-deflection landing-flaps.

YMMV,
Bob - Cap't. Obvious - W.

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