[aprssig] APRS antenna for an airplane

[Joe Della Barba]

I have used a rubber duck on a suction cup extension cable. I have also 
used a wire dipole taped to a window, a spare aircraft-band antenna that 
was intended for an aircraft band H/T, and a 1/4 wave mag mount on 
Cessna landing gear. All of the above have done fine for APRS tracking 
with a 2 meter H/T. If you own the airplane there are plenty of aircraft 
antennas available for VHF business band that would work fine.  Or you 
could buy a wire aircraft antenna and trim it down a bit.
73
Joe N3HGB

w2kb at comcast.net wrote:
> A previous owner of my '76 Cessna Cardinal had an extra aircraft 
> antenna mounted on the belly with a cable terminated with a BNC 
> connector in the cockpit so that an aviation handheld could better be 
> used as a backup should both the regular transceivers fail.  I 
> recently tried the antenna with a Kenwood D700 running at the lowest 
> transmit power setting and it works fine.  (I don't want to trim the 
> antenna length to better preserve its backup use.)
>  
> 73,  ---Ken W2KB  N16019
>  
>
>     -------------- Original message --------------
>     From: Earl Needham <needhame1 at plateautel.net>
>
>     > At 01:15 AM 9/16/2006, Andrew Rich wrote:
>     > >Any suggestions ?
>     >
>     > I've used an HT with a rubber duck to check into a repeater net
>     > 200+ miles away, so you'll be able to get SOME results with
>     almost anything.
>     >
>     > The suggestion to use an inspection panel is a good one, but if
>     > CASA is a problem, you could simply have another aviation
>     antenna added and
>     > use that. It would help if you could get it tuned for 144
>     instead of 120,
>     > but I suspect it would work in either case as long as your
>     transceiver
>     > could tolerate the mismatch.
>     >
>     > BTW, if you normally fly pretty high AGL, then mount the antenna
>     > on the belly. However, if you normally fly low, like a crop
>     duster, you
>     > might be b etter served by mounting the antenna on top.
>     >
>     > 7 3
>     > Earl
>     >
>     >
>     > Earl Needham, KD5XB, Clovis, New Mexico DM84jk
>     >
>     >
>     >
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