Auxiliary Antenna

Hi All,

I'm very close to completion on my 7A. Back in the day when I was hanging antennas, I hung two COM antennas on the belly a few inches aft of the main spar on each side of the fuselage. My Dynon com has been connected to one of the antennas on the right side. I thought I'd use the second antenna to connect to a handheld com radio for backup.

Two questions, 1) Has anyone else done this? 2) If so, where did you mount your BNC jack to connect your radio?

Much Thanks!

Others have done this. I had considered it but didn't do it as I have two panel mounted comms. I would suggest putting it on the instrument panel or at least some where you could easily connect to it in flight with a short patch cable.

Bevan

Aircraft Spruce sells a little box with a cord that you can mount and run your single COM antenna to and when you plug the little 1/8" cord into it (with a BNc on the other end for the handheld), it disconnects your main com and instead connects your handheld to the antenna. This is a great little unit. If you actually have a second unused antenna, then ether mount a bulkhead BNC in a convenient place and have a patch cable handy, or have a cable connected to he antenna and have the cable hanging in a convenient place so you can reach it in flight and hook up your handheld if necessary.

I did this, the spare coax rg400 is Velcro under the panel within easy reach, hopefully never need it.

O ya, my backup plan if I crash, maybe someone from the avionics department can chime in, if I end up upside down somewhere, and I reach into the baggage comp and grab my 406 ELT and plug it onto this spare com coax will it transmit better than the antenna that is on the baggage comp wall upside down?