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I used Bob Archer's antenna switch on my last
Legacy, and it worked fine. You couldn't tell you had only one antenna for
two COM's. The only down side is that you do indeed have one more possible
point of failure in your COM system, which violates the KISS
principle.
As for ground planes, I made a star pattern
ground plane for my XPNDR antenna with thin copper sheet (think hobby shop), but
didn't do anything for the MKR or COM antennas (normal Comant types). They
worked fine, which says to me that the conductance of the carbon fiber skin
at radio frequences is sufficient, and that any other ground plane is
superfluous.
BTW, I've had techies at various companies
swear to me that their "hockey puck" type antennas for GPS, XM radio, etc.,
absolutely will not work without being place on at least 2.567 square feet of
metal, blahdidiblah, . . . I've put several in airplanes and other
places without any ground plane at all and they work perfectly. Go
figure.
Jim Cameron
Boerne, TX
(RFLEG (Really Fast Legacy) in progress!)
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