Gary Emerson wrote:
Had this random thought over the weekend. Figured there were people on
RAS that might have information to say whether this would help or hurt
the transmit "power" of a transponder.

Instead of mounting a single antenna on the belly of the fuse where it
can get beat up in the trailer, off field landings or just rocks and mud
on the runway, what about a pair of antennas mounted on the side of the
fuse on the tail boom similar to static ports. If you ran a single
co-axial cable and then put a T at the end and then ran a short piece to
each side of the boom then you'd have, in concept anyway, a good 360
"view". It may well be that antennas don't like this sort of
arrangement so I figured I'd ask. Also has the obvious downsides of
needing the factory to build this in to the plane and doubling your
antenna costs. The benefit is that it does move the antenna farther
from the pilot.

Besides the impedance matching problems, you will also be created
unpredictable radiation patterns. This will probably create nulls (dead
spots) in numerous directions. Might as well not install the
transponder. Check out this web site for some examples:

http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/...pantarray.html

Tom