I appreciated the effort Wouter went to to explain his thinking about the aerodynamic properties of the flap. Agree or disagree, since this is a community effort (right?) it would be nice if we had some dialog about the substance of his comments, rather than just dismissing them on the basis of some computer modeling that none of the rest of us have seen.

That said, my understanding is that leaving the luff length unrestricted will not actually penalize Wouter's design, since his argument I believe is that aerodynamically a design without the flap is more efficient.

BTW, on the issue of support tubes, I would be careful about making an argument just on the basis that noone else is using them. Don't forget Chris's "McDonald's" story. Eliminating diversity unnecessarily may not be doing the class as a whole a favor.