Vertical Stabilizer Navigation Antenna & skin fitting

Hours: 2.5

Before I can close up the Vertical Stabilizer skin, I need to fit the Navigation Antenna, run the wires for the Antenna and the rudder light and fit the skin including up-drilling the countersunk holes in the skin with the rib structure.

So one thing after another, first I gave a quick test fit for the skin and then drilled up all the countersunk holes.
Test fitting the skin and aligning everything to match up-drill the countersunk holes And found one hole that should be dimpled as well

After that was done, I went to work to fit the Rami AV-525 Navigation Antenna I’m going to use. I already fit the Antenna onto the inner rib a while ago before I built the rest of the structure, so now it was a matter of fitting it all with the skin to be able to close the skin around the Antenna.

On the left side, the Antenna comes out one of the pre-drilled rivet holes, so I just had to up-drill that to the correct size.
Enlarged hole for the Antenna on the left side

For the right size, the Antenna comes out offset a bit further behind, so I marked out where I needed to make the hole in the skin, then used a center punch to get a good center to drill the hole:
Marking where the notch for the Antenna has to go Centerpunched the spot for the hole to goHole drilled on the right side for the Antenna

With the hole in place, I cut back a small notch, so that the skin can slot around the Antenna since the arms of the Antenna are fixed to the internal balun.Notch to slot the skin around the Antenna

After all that was done, I put it all together for a final test fit:Left side view of the Antenna in place on the Vertical Stabilizer Right side view of the Antenna in place on the Vertical Stabilizer

Looks all good, so now I need to finish running the wires on the inside and then I can rivet the skin closed.

 

2 thoughts on “Vertical Stabilizer Navigation Antenna & skin fitting

  1. Pingback: Vertical Stabilizer skin riveting - Philip's Sling TSi Build Log

  2. Brian Garrett

    Philip – I like your solution on the VOR installation. I’m at that stage right now and as best as I can tell the antenna actually is molded into the mount, so I was ready to cut an opening tonight but it looks like only one is necessary. I’ll have to track down some more grommets as I think I’m out at this time.

    Reply

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