Communications
Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2023 3:34 pm
The Kitfox comes with a plate welded in place on the top of the fuselage right behind the cabin to mount an antenna for your comm radio... but I will have two comm radios, so where to mount the second antenna.
After doing some research I came across a full wavelength antenna from Advanced Aircraft Electronics Inc. Full wavelength? What is that, and why does it matter? The typical antenna is a half wavelength antenna and is required to be mounted on a ground plane, that basically reflects the other half of the wavelength... a ground plane is basically a metal surface, like the plate welded to the top of the fuselage. But there is only one of those on the fuselage, so by using a full wavelength antenna it doesn't require a ground plane. But... it is twice as big!, so where to put it?
The antenna made by Advanced Aircraft Electronics is basically a 1" wide by 43" long fiberglass tape with a connector in the center. It is flexible, and very thin. I came across a discussion on Team Kitfox where a couple of users had put this antenna into the vertical stabilizer. I liked this idea, but the v-stab isn't 43" tall, so that put part of the antenna through and below the horizontal stab. The could make installation of the h-stab tricky if you didn't account for it well enough.
When I started looking at it I realized if you installed it diagonally you could just get it to fit without interfering with the h-stab... so that's what I did.
After doing some research I came across a full wavelength antenna from Advanced Aircraft Electronics Inc. Full wavelength? What is that, and why does it matter? The typical antenna is a half wavelength antenna and is required to be mounted on a ground plane, that basically reflects the other half of the wavelength... a ground plane is basically a metal surface, like the plate welded to the top of the fuselage. But there is only one of those on the fuselage, so by using a full wavelength antenna it doesn't require a ground plane. But... it is twice as big!, so where to put it?
The antenna made by Advanced Aircraft Electronics is basically a 1" wide by 43" long fiberglass tape with a connector in the center. It is flexible, and very thin. I came across a discussion on Team Kitfox where a couple of users had put this antenna into the vertical stabilizer. I liked this idea, but the v-stab isn't 43" tall, so that put part of the antenna through and below the horizontal stab. The could make installation of the h-stab tricky if you didn't account for it well enough.
When I started looking at it I realized if you installed it diagonally you could just get it to fit without interfering with the h-stab... so that's what I did.