| Just realaised I hadn't mentioned the wires!
Flying wires and landing wires refer to the loads that they transfer from the wings to the fuselage.
The wings are not strong enough, mainly because of the thin section, to take the lift that they generate so the top wings have wires joining them to the fuselage; these are the called the flying wires because they handle the loads whist flying. The load from the bottom wings is transferred to the top wings by the interplane struts.
When landing, as the wheels hit the ground the wings try to continue earthwards because of momentum. The landing wires join the bottom wings to the fuselage via the cabane struts to stop this happening and the load from the top wings is transferred to the bottom wings once again by the interplane struts.
On the SE5a the flying wires a double, that is two single wires not one wire around a pulley (16 wires in total).
It’s a bit cumbersome to explain but I hope you can understand what I mean! |