Adjusting guide / support wires on aircraft

I would think that since the airplane is a race plane subjected to mostly positive loads that the airplane would be jacked up to a straight and level position in all axises and the wing tips be set at the correct dihedral and the lift (flying)wires tightened to hold the prescribed angle. Then set the anti-lift (landing wires) so that there is no movement in the tips in either direction. Then fly the airplane, listen and look as you build up speed. Set trim to see if it flies hands off. Then go back and re-trim. Some old guys did it by "twanging" the wires. The wires are THE HELP. They are the prime support in a structural cell. Perhaps some failures in the early days were due to inadequate terminal fittings where the wires met the structure. That's where the loads go if you have good strong wires. When our L-3 met it's end, none of the terminal fittings failed, they pulled out chunks of the spars and stretched and bent the metal parts to which they were attached in the fuselage.

 

I have some guides somewhere for WW-I aircraft, which were pretty complicated since most were biplanes and a few were triplanes (Sopwith, not Fokker DR.I, which was not wire braced). Seems to be as much art as science, like propping an engine.