Installing Antenna Mounting Plates
TLDR
- Installed doubler plates to all antennas
- Ran wires to all antenna (not connected yet)
Detail
There are 5 antennas that needed doublers:
- Top comm
- Bottom comm
- GPS1 (GA-35 WAAS)
- GPS2 (GA-56 Non-WAAS)
- Transponder
ELT also needs a mounting plate but I feel like I might need to first test fit the back seat before I can mount the ELT antenna, so I am leaving it alone for now.
So I spent the last few nights drilling and installing mounting plates for these antennas and running coax wires for them. The general idea is pretty straightforward: I used the doubler provided by Midwest Panel Builders as template to locate the holes, drill them, rivet with 2.4mm countersink.
I am not cutting wires and crimping BNC connectors just yet. I will wait until I am confident the wire is where it should be and all Adel clamps/zip ties are installed.
The only one that gave me some issue is the GA-56 plate. The hardware that came with my kit is the same as other plates: countersink and nut plates. I installed them without a second thought. However I found out that the screws on the GPS antenna could not be removed. So I had no way of screwing them into the nut plates. I will have to remove the nut plates and just use the screws and locknuts. I ran out of 2.4 mm rivets so I bought some more online, and am still waiting :(
The rest of the plate installation went fine. It took me a lot of time, because I was a little nervous drilling holes on my new fuselage..
Gallery
