Antennas (2)

 2 hours

Today I installed three of the four antennas I'm going to use:

Garmin GA 35 for the GPS

Comant CI 105 for the transponder

and the ACK antenna that came with my E-04 ELT

The fourth antenna will be a Comant CI 122 for the VHF radio, but I'm not exactly sure where I'm going to put that one yet.

The GPS antenna was the only one that really took much custom work, but it wasn't too bad.  I located it on the turtledeck just behind the canopy.  Since the two sheets that form the turtledeck overlap right there at the top, it created a non-level surface.  I added a small doubler to the right side so the antenna could have a flat surface to sit on.  I also drilled out five rivets and replaced them with flush rivets.  I guess it's not really flat, because it's obviously curved, but you know what I mean.  I bought a piece of 1/8" thick rubber sheet from Lowe's to make a gasket, and that sort of worked to close the gap between the antenna base and the top of the plane.  I think I will find a slightly softer piece of rubber and redo this later.  If the gasket compresses a little more I think this will work okay!

I don't have any good pictures of it, but I installed the transponder antenna on the floor just aft of the baggage compartment.

I put the ELT antenna on the turtledeck right above the control mixer.  That allowed me to reach up through the mixer access panel to reach the connector on the inside.  One note I have is, if you install the antenna close to centerline like I did, the connector will be real close to the C-channel that runs down the spine of the turtledeck on the inside.  I was able to make it fit by using a 90-degree adapter, but it would have been a little easier to just drill the hole slightly farther off-center!