> On a few occasions now we have (as fellow pilots) used the ELT signal to > find a missing airplane by flying through the antenna radiation "cone" > in different directions and using the strongest signal on each pass as > the centre.
I'm no antenna expert, but I thought the pattern from that sort of antenna was more of a doughnut shape, which means directly above the antenna would be one of the weakest places in the pattern. An electrical engineer buddy here at work did a study of my dipole and plotted out an image of the pattern, and it was a doughnut. I was investigating the effects of painting the aft deck with silver paint, and result was not encouraging at all! If I find it I'll post it later. Adrian Carter posted his design for a comm antenna at one time. I've reposted it at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/kr_antenna.gif if it'll help anybody else out. Mark Langford, Huntsville, AL N56ML at hiwaay.net see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford
