On Thursday, 17 May 2018 06:58:54 UTC+8, George Haeh wrote:
The DG-1000 Club seems a good illustration of the law of unintended consequences. Having the fixed gear as far down as the retractable version would impose a significant drag penalty, but having it higher up imposes a higher takeoff and touchdown speed.

The electric gear version can fail to come down. The flight manual recommends practicing the emergency gear down mechanism periodically. I know of one gear up landing where the Instructor had not practiced the emergency gear down.

This is what I think too - the original design had the high main-wheel but people wanted easier cockpit access so they gave it the lower main/nose wheel combination .. which has compromised the landing attitude. All well & good, but it does now expose the tail-wheel to some serious abuse by students! I guess any "do everything" performance glider is going to be compromised to some extent - in this case as a club ab-initio trainer. I still think the best mitigation (as an instructor) is to actively limit the rate of descent if required.