lml@lancaironline.net Mailing List Archive

Hi Jack,

I am wanting to install an antenna in the left wingtip on my Legacy for Com2. I am wondering if you could recommend one. It looks like I will need to get one of the Bob Archer VOR antenna's. It doesn't look like there is an actual Bob Archer Com antenna that will fit. What did you use specifically in your wingtip? I remember reading some time back that a com and vor antenna are very close in size so I am guessing I could use them interchangeably. Not sure.

If anyone else has any experience with this I would also appreciate their input.

Matt

From: Jack Morgan <jmorgan1023@comcast.net>
To: lml@lancaironline.net
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2012 12:03 PM
Subject: [LML] Nav/Com Antennas

Dean:

I used Bob Archer antennas on my IV P with excellent results. The vertical tail unit is COM 1. I placed the wingtip version in each tip. The right tip (also containing the magnetic heading sensor) feeds the G900 nav/gs 4 way splitter recommended by Garmin while the left tip is the COM 2 antenna. Tuning a distant ATIS shows both com antennas have the same sensitivity. You may hear that com antennas should be vertically polarized which is correct in theory. In actual practice the scatter experienced by both the XMIT and received signals makes the polarization effect negligible.

I also placed the GPS/XM antennas below the eglass turtledeck. The xpdr antenna is the only external antenna which is on the bottom using the carbon fiber as a ground plane with excellent results.

Jack Morgan

On Jan 3, 2012, at 6:00 AM, Lancair Mailing List wrote:

I was looking for some advice about communication antennas. The legacy is setup to have one com antenna. We want a capable IFR airplane and I am hesitant to have one antenna with a diplexer (or is it duplexer, I've seen it both ways) as a possible single point of failure. Is this the method that most people are using? If you mounted a 2nd com antenna, where did you place it? I searched the archives and found someone else who asked the same question but I couldn't find the answer. Any other input or advice on the subject would be appreciated.

Dean Whiting