Re: Smart Tabs
pra100,
My experience with I/Os has been that the following will help you get the highest top speed:
Can you make her porpoise at full speed and full trim out (up)?
If the answer is no, or the prop starts to blow out before you get to full out trim, then maybe shifting some weight aft will help. Shift enough weight so she will just start to porpoise at full trim and WOT and the prop does not blow out. This should improve your top speed. Then you can control the porpoise with the Smart Tabs.
If the answer is yes, and it is uncontrollable without trimming in, then you may be able to move some weight forward and/or the Smart Tabs will help control it a lot.
If the answer is yes, and it is just starting to porpoise and it is controllable by trimming in slightly, then the weight balance is probably good and the tabs will help with the slight porpoise.
They are usually fastest trimmed out as far as possible and weight balanced so they just start to porpoise. In either case, you should be able to get more speed with the tabs as they allow you to set the boat trimmed bow up for maximum speed and then control the resulting porpoise.
Also, with the boat setup like this, hole shot and low speed planing are usually compromised, so this automatically results in the other major benefit of the tabs: they get you awesome low speed planing and improve the hole shot. I'll bet that set up like above, with tabs, your particular boat will plane at 12 - 15 MPH, and still rock at top speed. Good luck!
