Can you post a transom shot? Curious on how you fitted them.... Great idea on running a little higher weight oil... I just may keep mine...

Did the Sonics have much setback?
I know you built a decent length setback bracket for the Checkmate. With my 24’ Hull and 16” (or 18”?) of setback, my K-planes don’t cause any ill handling, and they’re friggin surfboards. Just wondering if the extra offset from your bracket will make the K-planes the better choice.

Here you go.... ( X-Dim is now 2.25" higher than in pik)

Has anyone tried interceptors in place of tabs.


https://www.boatingmag.com/better-solution-for-trim-control

Mounted correctly, tabs will not negatively impact speed or handling. Mounted incorrectly though, you'll have issues. As has already been said, where you mount them is critical. If your boat runs pretty low in the water at the stern at full throttle, you should mount them as far apart as possible to get the maximum side to side purchase and stability. (I had to mount mine over the first lifting strake since my outside chines are well out of the water at speed.) Then you have to mount the hinge point at least 1/4" above the planning bottom to avoid drag. Next, you need to look at the full up position to make sure you're not dragging tab even when full up. Lastly, you need to make sure you have enough travel to get some decent down tab with all of the previous stuff addressed. As for parallel with the bottom vs horizontal, horizontal seems to work better and have less drag.

As for what size tab to use, I know of several 22 Progression owners who have 280 K Planes on their boats and like them. (They are heavy though.) I have 12" x 12" Boat Levelers on mine and love them. I'm not a huge fan of the plastic cylinders, but they've been on the boat (run hard on Lake Ontario) for 23 years now with zero failures. If I were to do it again today, I'd go with Lenco electric tabs due to their ease of installation and speed of operation. They do make a high performance model too.

Lenco's are nice from a setup point, but thru bolt the upper mounts instead of using the screws if you plan of running enthusiastically. I previously had Lencos and found them not to be compatible with my, ummm driving style.......

and now after thinking about it, I may end up relocating my tabs lower and closer, if I end up with them completely out of the water at speed. The unforseen problems of going from 300 hp to 650........ It did handle great at 60, 80 may be a different story.

I had 280's mounted parallel with the hull on my 24 Superboat. The worked great. They did everything they were supposed to do when deployed and no effect on speed when fully retracted.

Gary, I had the 150's (shortest) K-planes on my Pantera, and they worked fine for me. Being a 7' boat, you needed the tabs, because weight shift definitely affected the ride.

I'm wondering which pumps you had on your set of K-planes...the plastic reservoir style will run quicker and they will "over run" a bit. The metal reservoir style is the slower of the two pumps and I believe those are the correct pumps to run with the K-planes.