Thanks for the advice and photo. I don't want to seem argumentative, but you seem to be missing the point(s). It's not that we cannot reach the valve. I was able to reach it and grasp it easily, but no matter how I tried to turn it, arrange it, manipulate it, whatever, it was always difficult to get the buttons positioned in relation to my fingers so that it was easy to operate. And my wife finds it unsettling to be required to crane your neck and pull the hose to it's limit in order to orally inflate the wing.
Look at the photo you provided. Now imagine your left hand moving up in a natural motion to grasp the valve. It seems to me that the most natural way to move your hand would end up with the inflator valve under your fingers. Great! Now try to push the purge button; it's sticking out of the bottom of your fist, nowhere near any fingers. No problem! If you release air, you have to move the valve anyway. You want to move the valve up over your shoulder (assuming you are prone) so that it's up high where the bubble is. So when you do that you can rotate your hand around the valve to position your fingers over the purge valve. OK, so now you have to move your thumb around to the other side of the hose/valve. Oops! You dropped it. Or maybe not, so now you have the hose extending back toward the wing from the bottom of your fist, and the exhaust button is under your forefinger. It's this very manuever that I found so difficult and frustrating.
My new corrugated hose is 4 inches longer than my old hose. Now I can make the move described above without dropping the valve. Or I can easily hold the valve so that one button's under my thumb and one's under a finger, and I can comfortably hold it like that for a long time, if I want to.
It never catches or knocks on anything. It never gets in the way any more than the short one did. It's a hell of a lot easier to retreive if it falls behind me, and I don't have to rely on a strap, which holds it down, or a bungee to hold it in place.
It makes me happy. It works for me.
What I have not heard yet, though, is an argument why the 4" shorter hose is better?