Wing conversion

[Larry Mednick]

It is possible to convert a cable braced wing to strut braced, but not easy and possibly not Safe. The things you have to think about is structurally the keel needs to be stronger once is looses its bracing off the king post. Then the leading edges will need sprogs installed which puts a “NEW” torsional load on the leading edges, so they will probably need to be beefed up as well.

The pitch stability in most cable braced wings is most likely using reflex from the reflex bridal/luff lines and with those gone, the current airfoil (shape of all the battens) may be divergent especially removing all of the drag from the top of the wing and possibly increasing drag below the wing. Furthermore, if you use airfoiled struts, they can cause yaw instability which in turn creates roll instability.

So in a nutshell the wing may fail structurally and or possibly be yaw, roll and pitch unstable all from converting a perfectly good cable braced wing to strutted.