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#22
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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. --- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. https://www.avg.com |
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