Marker Beacon Ant ?
 

Anyone using a coax wire stripped to copper and glued in? In the wing tip instead of a CI 102 ant ? If so how is it working for you Thanks Jeff

I'll confess to no direct experience, but it's been discussed over on the Aeroelectric Connection quite a bit, and experts seem to agree that something as poor as the proverbial wet noodle hanging inside a main gear leg fairing will work fine for a marker beacon ant. Reason given is that the signal is so strong when you need it to work, the receiver will pick it up even with a very poor quality antenna. I've heard tales of people just tying a length of insulated wire to the center conductor of the coax.

FWIW...

Wet noodle here. No problem at all. Over 10yrs of flying the ILS with it (coax glued in a wing tip) and have never thought twice about it. It just works.

No marker beacon in the next one!

Why would you want a marker beacon receiver these days.....?

Wet noodle here as well. Routed down the gear leg fairing. Easy. Works fine.

What Scot and Mike said. Why waste the time/effort/money to install a marker beacon?

Marker beacon
 

Thank You VAF and the people that respond. Sometimes these sound like crazy ?'s to the pros but were not all pro's just trying to get this 7 done and in the air with as little having to go back and add or remove wrong thoughts or stuff. Thanks Again Jeff

I put a nice expensive Comant MB antenna in the wingtip on the RV-10 when I was building it. I pulled it out before the plane was finished.

Stripped coax glassed into the lower cowling. Works great.

Why? Because the audio panel has the lights and sounds for MBs, so why not?

Store bought antenna
 

I first went with the glassed in wet noodle in the cowling it worked but not well. I then tried stripped coax out in the breeze and that worked better. I then found a boat style MB antenna and installed it. It works great. In my opinion no antenna you make in your garage is better than a tuned antenna that was designed for the intended use.


Russ Keith
RV9-A Flying

I have the expensive MB antenna under the tail of the airplane only because I have a MB receiver in the panel. Would take both the antenna and MB out but do not like the idea of having holes that need something else added to cover the holes.

Have never used the MB on an IFR approach. The OLD non-precision approach GPS has everything needed for IFR other than backup VOR and the SL30 does that.