Aviation Partners has made billions of dollars selling winglets over a very long period of time. Maybe it's a Seattle thing but just like Microsoft they cornered the market without actually doing much physical labor. Joe Clark got a bunch of aeronautical engineers together to solve the winglet problem. I think they started with the G-II STC but I'm not certain. Boeing adopted their designs and incorporated them into their manufacturing process and paid a licensing fee for each winglet built (that's the Microsoft reference origin). Joe and the one who's name shall not be uttered in these hallowed halls were partners in a number of different ventures and as an employee of the forsaken one he was not unfamiliar to me. I didn't like or dislike him, I was never in a position to ever say anything other than hello or goodbye. In any case one fine day I went to work, clocked in and walked out of the hangar to see something completely unexpected...
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I thought I might be on some hidden camera show, my dumb head said "There's no way that's real.". We were not immune to having movie/tv productions on the property so I just sort of chalked it up to something like that and went on about my day. Nope, that was Aviation Partners next big thing, thank God it didn't work. It's seems similar to 26" gold rims on a lifted diesel Ram 4X4 doing the Carolina squat with a sound system that opens refrigerators when it drives by. Plus it didn't have nav lights and could only fly during daytime. It's been a long weird road.