Luff Line Catch Cable Failure on the Ground

[XCanytime]

When setting up my Wills Wing glider today at Woodstock, I saw at the bottom of my bag the Luff Line Catch with a short length of tang, nicopress, and broken cable. Shocking to say the least. A picture of it is attached. Analysis of the failure showed that the length of the cable from the kingpost exit to the nicopress was at best 3/4 of an inch. The failure was right at the kingpost exit. The heat shrink tubing did not allow a visual check of the cable. I checked the same setup on a Sport 2 and it had a good 4 or 5 inches of coated cable from the kingpost exit to the edge of the nicopress. Every time I attached the steel ring that held the luff lines to the catch, the pull on the catch would cause possible chafing of the heat shrink tubing at the kingpost exit hole and a bend of the very short length of cable. This was not a flexible bend, with the cable being so short. Over 100 hours of flying and setting up and breaking down many times, the possible chafing continued to the bare cable right at the kingpost exit, or the continued bending of the small length of cable right at the kingpost exit caused it to fail. I am ashamed to say that I never checked this. My flawed thinking was that the luff lines did not load the cable very much, so I didn't really bother to check it. I welcome all comments.

Thanks,
Bacil

The broken cable and luff line catch.

[RedBaron]

I welcome all comments.

That stinks. Thanks for posting. Get a U2, no more stupid luff lines.

[markc]

Wow, that would freak one out!

Definitely seems worthy of a phone call to WWing, find out if others
have reported the same problem, or if there's a recommended maintenance
schedule for that kingpost cable.

Glad that you found this on the ground rather than in the air Bacil!

MarkC