Anthony,

No I’m at Ascension. I’d like to move, but I don’t know if they’d try to hold me to the lease. Things are a bit better, but leaving the hangar doors up all day drives me crazy. You’re at SRQ, correct? Let’s meet up sometime.

My new hangar is at my home field at Laconia NH, LCI. I like that a LOT better! Photo of that below:

Yes. I studied them a bit when I first considered a CJ2 with the new Garmin panel as my range extending upgrade path. Let’s just say I'm not a Tamarack winglet fan, on a few accounts:

1. Over the last 1/2 dozen years, there have been a similar number of incidents (5? 6?) where a Tamarack winglet equipped plane experienced an uncommanded roll over, a winglet that departed the plane, and/or a fatal crash with an unexplained roll over. As best I can tell, there are no similar reports for non-winglet Citations. Either Tamarack equipped airplanes are statistically unlucky, or something is amiss.

2. To my ear, their claims of performance improvements seem to have a bit of puffery. I can see where the winglets might provide some extra lift, and provide “some” degree of performance enhancements in the high flight levels, particularly as the plane transitions to the highest cruise altitude, and accelerates to cruise speed. However, the CJ3 is so highly powered, that you never need to step climb, and the timeframe from leveling to hitting the max KIAS, is quite short. I don’t see how the juice is worth the squeeze, particularly in the CJ3. It reminds me of an energy saving product for the residential home market, that claimed “millions of BTU’s in annual energy savings”. In fossil fuel terms, a million BTU’s is somewhere between 7 and 10 gallons. The claim is true, but the actual $ benefit was negligible.

3. I think winglets are a love ‘em or hate ‘em sort of product. I think some buyers (like me) will simply bypass a plane with winglets. From a future marketing standpoint, I wouldn’t want a product on my plane that might alienate some potential buyers.

I’m not saying that winglets are definitively unsafe, nor am I disputing that they might offer “some” amount performance benefit. However, I’m skeptical by nature, and particularly skeptical in this instance.

Ascension (formerly Dolphin) drove me away with $200 per day transient parking charge. It used to be $50.

I now fly to KVNC when I visit the area, about the same distance to my folks house.

I was pissed when CAA allowed Ascension to break the contract and increase the fees that much and still hold CAA status. They should have held firm on that. Ascension seems to be not money oriented, not customer oriented.

I'm hoping Sheltair will compete for CAA status with decent fees, but I fear not. I inquired recently and they wanted a $462 facility fee, which indicates they aren't going to be cost competitive.

Mike C.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to think about that.

I don't like the fuel my plane burns, wish it was less.

But anything I can find to replace it with costs so much more and does less that I live with it.

Meanwhile, I drive an EV, built a stunningly efficient office building for my business, have geothermal at my house, and help people install residential solar. So my negative ecobalance isn't too bad overall.

Mike C.

Tamarack outright lies about the benefits. Winglets can get you a few percentage improvements, but nothing more. Often they claim the engine burns less fuel, at the same altitude and power setting, if the plane has winglets. I wonder how the engine knows to do that?

Mike C.

Tamarack outright lies about the benefits. Winglets can get you a few percentage improvements, but nothing more. Often they claim the engine burns less fuel, at the same altitude and power setting, if the plane has winglets. I wonder how the engine knows to do that?

Mike C.

There are small improvements in time to climb and cruise. But the plane is heavier, so that takes away some of the benefit.

But the claims are not small:

https://www.tamarackaero.com/news/how-c ... el-savings

"How Can Active Winglets Provide 33% Fuel Savings?"

"A simple answer to this question lies in the performance enhancements provided in real-life data - a flatwing CJ/CJ1 aircraft that could fly three hours nonstop prior to installing Active Winglets can now fly four hours nonstop on the same fuel with Active Winglets."

"Another way to measure the fuel savings associated with Active Winglets is with range. A flatwing aircraft is generally a 900 nm aircraft – however, equipped with Active winglets, the same flatwing aircraft can fly at least 1,200 nm."

So who believes what they just wrote?

For those of you who said "yes", you are their ideal customer. You will become among the owners who praise the winglets because to do anything else would be to admit your mistake and to devalue your plane.

If you get 5% improvements with winglets, be grateful, but that's about the extent of what you can expect with a "bentwing".

Cessna did not design the airplanes with that much improvement left to gain.

My opinion of Tamarack is that they are scientifically challenged hawkers of questionable value and overblown claims.

10 years from now, will you be able to get parts for these winglets? What will happen when you can't? You have tied the value of your plane to a proprietary company who has already filed bankruptcy once and feels like a "quick buck" type of operation.

Mike C.

Tamarack outright lies about the benefits. Winglets can get you a few percentage improvements, but nothing more. Often they claim the engine burns less fuel, at the same altitude and power setting, if the plane has winglets. I wonder how the engine knows to do that?

Mike C.

Ah, the same one that knows whether you send money to Williams every month and thus it can last longer.

Mike C.

Tamarack outright lies about the benefits. Winglets can get you a few percentage improvements, but nothing more. Often they claim the engine burns less fuel, at the same altitude and power setting, if the plane has winglets. I wonder how the engine knows to do that?

Mike C.

Agreed, I’ve had the same issue with BLR on King Air winglets. Some claims by Raisbeck are exaggerated, especially if they say you can combine the benefits of their different mods with no overlap in increased performance. I once asked James Raisbeck for a “Raisbeck calculator”.

The sales pitch for any winglet installation should be limited to “they look really cool!”.

Naïve question here. If they’re making these claims, don’t they have new performance tables? And if the performance tables are wrongn(dangerous), wouldn’t the FAA intervene? Or is it just advertising numbers and the performance tables haven’t changed?

No, they don't.

The AFMS simply says performance will be as good or better than stock. That's all the FAA cares about officially. For the CJ, their AFMS section on runway data:



Correct.

This leads to a somewhat dangerous situation when it comes to landing Vref. With the larger wing, the published Vref in the AFM no longer gives you the desired AOA of 0.6. So there is no longer proper correlation of the speed and angle of attack.

Okay, that doesn't seem all that bad, but it does have negative consequences. If you fly "properly" at the book Vref, thus have a lower AOA, the tendency to float on landing will be higher and it will have a tendency to land well past the touchdown marker. If you do put it down on the marker, the weight on wheels is less since the wing is generating more lift, thus your braking potential is less. This leads to longer braking distances, more tendency to hydroplane, etc.

The fix for all this is to fly slower than book Vref so that you are achieving about the same AOA or 0.6 as before. This is more aerodynamically correct but this is technically contrary to the AFM and AFMS. This will reduce landing distances which is helpful, though you don't have those numbers such that you can actually use this feature.

A similar situation happens on takeoff. The V speeds are wrong due to the extra wing area. Also, on an abort, which will now occur at higher speed than the plane aerodynamically would like, you will now have less braking due to more residual lift from the wing. There is no easy way for a pilot to make adjustments to the V speeds for takeoff, so they don't.

Tamarack doesn't want to refly the entire performance tables for takeoff and landing, so they rely on the old AFM numbers which are basically wrong with the new wing.

I think the FAA should have required Tamarack to refly the performance tables for takeoff and landing. The fact the FAA doesn't appear to understand how a change in wing area affects braking is concerning.

Mike C.

Agreed. The Flight Planning Manuals published by Textron, and massaged by Tamarack, do not include any sort of landing or Vref data/calculations.

I couldn't resist, so I did the same comparison between the Tamarack tables, and the Textron tables, for my CJ3+. Interestingly, it shows a 5% improvement with the winglets.

Even more interesting, is that I am almost certain that the Textron tables are inaccurate, at least based on my experience with my airplane. I relooked at the FlySto data for my flight out of KSAT, up to KLCI (shown in a chart a few post above). That was a 1,600 nm flight, so I had full fuel, and 2 people, with medium size bags, and one 40 lb bike. I was probably 300 lbs below MTOW. On takeoff, the temp was ISA +19, and it wasn't until FL370 until I saw ISA +10, where the temps dropped off quickly. I was at ISA 0 at FL410, and ISA -10 at FL450. The total climb time was 27 minutes, and the fuel burned in the climb was about 650 lbs. By the time I was down to about a weight of 12,000 lbs, I was doing 397 KTAS, with an ISA temp of about -7.

My actual data seems MUCH better than the data published in the Textron Flight Planning Guide.

Anyway, I still don't want winglets, but interesting nonetheless. CJ3+ comparison below: