I purchased a Garmin 496 for use in my RV4. I already have a panel mount, bendix-King KLS135A GPS/COM.
Question: Is it possible to "drive" two GPS's simultaneously, using a single antenna?? Can the GPS signals be split?
I'd seen this question posed before (and bear in mind I'm no expert). I believe I remember the answer being that the antenna generates such a low electrical signal to the reciever that if you were to split the signal, you'd decrease it to a point where it's unusable by either receiver. If this is true perhaps someone more knowledgeable might know of a signal amplifier that could be used to increase it so that it can be split.
King build their GPS RX to support a specific - db gain, preamplifer that is housed insite the antenna. Garmin uses a different gain specification with theirs. So a King antenna won't work (well) on a Garmin and vice-a-versa.
Also the bigger issue is the voltage that is required to power the pre-amp in the antenna comes from whatever is connected to it. There are 2 different voltages that are in use today 3v and 5v. An antenna that wants 3v could be damaged by one that drives with 5, and a 5V antenna, when driven with 3V usually doesn't work.
All of this could be done with a "black box" in the middle of the devices and the antenna as long as you are "like to like - garmin to garmin, king to king". However, I know of no-one who is making a *cheap* duplexor for GPS antennas...
Nice Idea, but probably not plausable given todays environment.
Dirt cheap, easy to assemble, works great. Single antenna becomes the single point of failure of the whole system, if nothing bad happens in the splitter.
Will be installing this in my plane over the summer.
Dual GPS, single antenna?
RV-9A Firewall Forward
Linear Mode
