Re: Smart Tabs - Any negatives
What I'm reading implies (to me) that having a manual trim outboard (electric tilt, but manual trim) gives me the potential for noticeable performance improvements from smart tabs. I'm trimmed up to the 2nd hole now...the lowest hole leaves too much hull in the water on plane, and the holeshot/topspeed trade-off goes downhill from here.
It's a 15' trihull, 65" beam, 70hp outboard. Trihull transitioning to flat bottom at the stern. Drafts about eight inches, freeboard about twice that. Being a smaller boat, I don't perceive much benefit to planing at slower speeds.
So, would I set the trim out further then count on the smarttabs to provide the awesome holeshot I get now? Would I be amazed at the improvement, do you think? Would I get 10% more top end speed? And 20% better fuel economy? Would I become more attractive to women,
and catch more fish? I know they'd increase the value of my rig by about 50%.
Oh, and do smart tabs make a small boat less sensitive to weight & balance variations? Like adding adding another passenger, or a 16gal bait tank, or an extra battery, yada yada yada.
I don't really have a problem to solve - but a promise of eye-popping performance gains might make it worth the price of admission.
I'm interested in whatever hunches, theories, experience anybody'd care to throw out here.
Thanks!
[edit...it just occurred to me that this might be a hijack of gmonkey's thread...unless he was done with it...then it's more like recycling. My apologies, gmonkey, if you weren't ready to move on yet.]
