Removing center strut on a kite

[mrandrewandrade]

I have heard that people tried flying old school C kites without some struts and they fly well, so people removed the struts. Did people just remove the bladder or undo the stitching, and remove the dacron strut to save on weight?

A friend gave me a 7m element2 which had a leading to trailing edge tear (and across) and a strut blow out. I was able to fix the canopy tear, but I didn't fix the strut. The kite flies very well without the center strut, it loops uniformly and has good high and low end. Without the stiffness of the center strut, the canopy takes the gusts well without yanking and at the low end the kite drifts over the head without stalling out. The only issue is that relaunch isn't that good, and it takes a technique similar to flying a cloud kite.

I was thinking i could use this kite for foiling in super light wind with long lines. Should I just unstitch and remove the center strut to save weight or would it not make much of a difference?

[airsail]

Any weight saving will help for light wind foiling, the kite won’t backstall as much. I did modify a 7 mtr element, but I removed the two side struts. Quite successful, worked well, the Element isn’t the lightest three strut kite to begin with but this made it a lot better for foiling.
I unpicked the struts and removed them completely, but due to the way Switch assemble the kite, the strut attach stitching also holds the canopy together so would need replacing.
Do not remove the two side struts, I did finally remove the centre strut as an experiment to make it strut less, kite worked well, relaunch didn’t.

[windfreak74]

ive done it on 3 kites. on 2 of them i flew them with struts deflated and then proceeded to cut the struts
left them with central one strut.
results are lighter kites and better drift due to flapping, with increased flaping leeds to some instability and smaller wind range. other than that all good to fly but nothing exceptional. one i made it strutless abd i never get to use ir ruined it.

[drone]

Had to remove 4 struts from RRD obsession 5m2. All struts valves was in cracks . Was to expensive to change 10 valves. I changed only middle strut from older kite.
Now I use kite for foiling, flies good.