My suggestion
Mudbud said:
Where are folks mounting a VOR antenna?
The antenna I have in hand has a central part (hockey puck) that is 1 inch wider than the top of my vertical stabilizer.
Wayne New builder in Costal Georgia
My vote is for under the horz stab (click me an watch me grow).
Two nut plates and one hole for the coax. I just left the "Puck" exposed but it was not obvious being that you have to lay on you back to see it. You could make a cool fiberglass "canoe" fairing to go over the puck and pick up that extra 0.1 mph.
Drag: My calculations show about 1/2 MPH drag at 200 mph. When I raced I would remove the VOR antenna, secure the coax and connector with a little piece of safety wire and speed tape to cover the holes and secure the safety wire to fish the coax out for later antenna re-installation. Time to remove or reinstall minutes, at most.
The other location is on top of the Vert stab, but I would not do that for a tail dragger due to poke in the eye danger, ouch
![Eek! :eek: :eek:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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Here is a page from a builder site showing the vert stab installation.
http://www.n2prise.org/rv9a079.htm
IT does not look bad (see his main page pictures) and if you paint the black puck to match the plane color it will look fine. I prefer the white fiberglass VOR whips over SS, but it does not matter, just for looks.
Radio performance. I am going to say I expect (know) the above external locations will out better performance any internal wing tip NAV antenna. I have heard the internal wing tip NAV antenna works OK, as the above stated. However I have a pet peeve against the internal Comm antennas, they are lousy IMHO.
Good Luck, just my opinion. I don't think the external mount, especially on the belly way aft looks bad. In fact on my RV-4 it was almost invisible.