Today is a Red Letter Day in my project to build a Bede BD-4C airplane: I installed the first antenna. It is a VOR navigation antenna which, basically, let’s me home in on a radio transmitter on the ground and do so by flying in a specific direction. For instance, if there is a VOR transmitter at an airport, and I want to fly due east toward that airport, the VOR receiver in my airplane will let me do that. It will tell me if I need to fly a bit north or a bit south so that, when I turn to the east, I am flying directly toward the airport.
I chose a RAMI AV-532 VOR antenna which looks like this. Each whisker is 26 inches long and it is about three feet wide. On the airplane, it does not look very large, but it is surprisingly big when I hold it in my hand.
The “best” place to put a VOR antenna on a light airplane like mine is at the top of the vertical stabilizer. My fin is already built, though, and it would be pretty difficult to run the coax cable through it and up to the antenna, so I opted for an antenna which could be fastened to the bottom of the fuselage.
Installing it was pretty easy:
- Drill four holes, two for the mounting bolts and two larger holes for the antenna leads.
- “Persuade” one of the whiskers to bend downward a bit, so that the end would not touch the fuselage.
- Grind away a little bit of the epoxy “hockey puck” so allow clearance for the rivet heads which are underneath it.
- Bolt the antenna on.
I attached the antenna to the bottom of the cabin of my Bede BD-4C airplane, just in front of the main landing gear box.
Next up: installing the transponder antenna.
