Tamarack Wingletted CitationJet Goes the Distance

A Cessna CitationJet equipped with Tamarack Aerospace’s active winglets made an unofficial record-breaking trip from Sandpoint, Idaho, to Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., on Tuesday night. The Tamarack CJ (N86LA) is on display at today’s NBAA Business Aviation Regional Forum at Westchester County Airport in White Plains. The nonstop 1,853-nm flight landed with reserves of 472 pounds after flying for six hours and 16 minutes.

Tamarack’s CJ is equipped with its active technology load alleviation system (Atlas) active winglets, which employ a Tamarack active control surface actuator mounted near each winglet. The actuator drives small moveable surfaces mounted outboard on the wing trailing edge, near the winglets, that move to counteract and alleviate the load on the wing. The result is a much lower bending moment on the wing, allowing addition of winglets without having to beef up wing structure and thus providing more efficient flight characteristics.

Tamarack is taking orders for the Atlas modification and plans to certify it on CJ models through the CJ3 in about a year. The CJ mod adds less than 50 pounds to the airframe and about two feet to each wing, but the more efficient wing allows carriage of one additional passenger with full fuel.