The Original Bargain-Basement Acrobat

The original Reed “clipped-wing” conversion did nothing more than shorten the wings 40 1/2 inches on each side. This wasn’t done by whacking away at the tips, as many folks believe. Rather, the inboard 40 were sawed off, the wingattachment fitting holes were redrilled, and the wing panels were thrown back on. A few other little goodies had to be done, such as installing a vertical U-shaped stiffener that bolted vertically to the spars and picked up the upper lift-strut bolt. This was needed because, when the wings and lift struts were shortened, the strut intersected the wing at a different angle, which introduced eccentric loads on the original lift-strut attach fittings—a definite no-no. This changed strut angle also meant the fuselage strut fittings had to be heated and bent. The purpose of the Reed conversion was to take a little of the Cub out of the Cub. It cut down the float on landing, made it less of a cork in rough air, made it stronger because the bending moments were less, and speeded up the roll rate because the wings were shorter. It is highly doubtful if any Reed conversions were done to help the airplane’s stability. It was the last two points— the increased strength and roll rate—that caught everybody’s eye. Here was a way that a couple of guys could spend a weekend with a sabre saw and welding torch and produce their very own 65hp acrobatic machine.—Budd Davisson, Editor-in-Chief, Flight Journal