It wasn't too long ago that rigid wing gliders came without tails. Then someone who had a big megaphone tucked and tumbled. Rigid wing sales fell off a cliff and soon there was a tail available (and as part of standard equipment) for ATOS gliders.

Recently, a flex wing glider tucked and tumbled under very similar circumstances to the tailless ATOS tuck. Flying straight and then instantly the nose goes down and the glider tucks. No warning. And he wasn't the only one to tuck over the last couple of years (Oleg, for example).

All of us who fly tailless gliders are aware of the fact that they could tuck and tumble at any minute. This is always there perhaps not in the forefront of your mind, but there buzzing around in the gray matter and making things a bit more uncomfortable for the pilot.

Wouldn't it be great if we could really damp down that little thought/emotion by making it much more difficult to tuck a flex wing glider? Maybe if you knew (rationally) and felt (emotionally) that your ship would pretty much remain upright under almost any circumstance, you'd have just that much more mental space to devote to flying as opposed to making sure that you didn't meet with a perilous fate.

Tails have been tried on flex wing glider, of course, but have fallen out of favor (unlike on rigid wings) because they are expensive, require additional packing, are easily breakable, and make for difficult full flare landings. Tails placed on existing keel are also ineffective as they don't have much of a moment arm on our short keels. To actually use tails we would need to add a keel extension, which would make them even harder to land with a full flare (but they seem to be able to do it with rigid wing gliders).

So we have a trade off. We accept the chance that we will tuck and trade it off against the inconvenience and cost of the tail. This tradeoff happened the other way with rigid wing gliders, but history and style has determined that it is not that way with us.

Still, it would be nice if we didn't have to wonder and worry when in turbulence whether we were going to go over or not. Perhaps some designer could make this a feature of his gliders and see if they sell well against the competition. Of course if wishes were elephants this RV park would be a zoo.