ArTex 345 ELT - Ground Plane Question

[jrevens]

Josh's installation sounds about the same as mine, and also the same as a good friend who has a Mod. IV Speedster. FWIW, my friend had his accidentally triggered while his airplane was sitting on the ground and he didn't notice it until about 10 minutes later when the monitoring agency actually called him, so it worked just fine. I believe that there are quite a few installed that way in Kitfoxes. You definitely need to have a good airframe ground to the mounting surface and hence to the base of the antenna.


This is what mine looks like, except I lowered the mounting plate position so that the tip of the antenna is below the surface of the cargo bay sack now.

[SilverFox5]

John
With the elt and elt antenna mounted in this position I’m curious where you mounted your comm antenna?
Im building a KF5 and the plate for the comm antenna is where you mounted the elt mounting plate. And the kit we picked up came with a Comant CI-121 comm antenna that we would need to mount there. But I see the artex 345 manual reguires the elt antenna to be at least 32 inches away from the comm antenna.

Joe Leeman
KF5 912 uls
Freedom, WI

[jrevens]

Hi Joe,

The mounting plate for my ELT is on the right edge of the fuselage, forward under the turtle deck cover. Are you sure that your comm antenna mount is there? My comm antenna is centered on the fuselage aft of the rear edge of the turtle deck cover. I welded the mounting plate on at that position. It’s a little aft of where the factory installs them now. I wanted to get a little more clearance from the rear of the turtle deck cover. The factory wasn’t installing a mounting plate up there at that time. I’m not sure what the distance is between the 2 antennas, but everything works fine.

[SilverFox5]

Hi John,
I see what you mean now. I thought your elt mount was in the centerline of the fuselage. Now it makes sense to me. I like like that mounting spot.

Joe