On Monday, January 28, 2013 10:55:14 AM UTC-7, Bob Whelan wrote:
... The hand wringing about flaps is amusing. Every airplane trainer

these days has flaps - and, of course, an engine to manage. Come to

think of it, gliders are probably the only aircraft still manufactured

without flaps.



I've wondered about that too. I'd never flown a flapped ship until I

bought one. It didn't seem to be very complicated at the time, and

still doesn't.





I'll "third that". And in gliders, most of the flap-based hand wringing

concerns *only* camber-changing flaps, not large-deflection landing flaps

(simply because there are very few of the latter, relative to the glider

population as a whole). As Alice might say, "Curioser and curioser."



I transitioned from a 1-26 to a large deflection landing flapped glider 1975,

with ~125 total hours (all glider), and zero instructional hours in a flapped

ship of any sort (unavailable to me then/there). Yeah, I did have theoretical

knowledge of flap-effects on a wing's lift & drag curves as functions of angle

of attack, and yeah, I did mentally prepare myself, but the actual initial

flight/landing was strictly a non-event in terms of "flap-use-trauma". In the

event, I liked large deflection landing flaps so much that I never again owned

a single seat glider without 'em.



Further evidence that how a person thinks, matters?



Bob W.

The only guy I've ever flown with who just couldn't come to grips with flaps (IS28b2 Twin Lark) was a flight instructor whose entire flying career had been in 2-33's. He kept whining, "Can't we just set the flaps and not mess with them?" But then the elevator trim had him baffled and he wouldn't go near the 'retractable' gear handle.