Thanks to everybody that offered thoughts and hints! I really appreciate it! Mark, thanks for the picture!!! It looks like the inside of my plane! Everything is almost identical! Amazing!!!
What I lack is APRS, and it sounds like a very good idea. I have a VHF/UHF handheld wired in as COM3, and it is idle almost 100% of the time. This would be a good candidate for APRS, interfaced with something like a TinyTrak3 from Byonics. There's a Garmin 196 in the panel, so it is just a matter of pulling more wires. I think 30% of the airplane's weight is in the wiring. In looking at your APRS setup, it looks like you have something that is nearly self contained. Is that possibly a Byonics MicroTrak 300 ? I'd really like to know!!! As for my ELT antenna, it will be moving indoors as soon as weather permits. Everybody else is already in there, and there's always room for one more. The one exception is the XPDR/DME post which will remain mounted to the bottom, almost exactly as depicted in your picture. I already got rid of the 6" diameter school bus strobes top and bottom and went to wingtip. Hopefully that will drop the RF interference a tad, and maybe give me 1-2 knots more... I haven't made any progress on trim rings for the instruments yet. The search continues. It is starting to look like perhaps a 3D printer output might do the trick. Thanks again, Dave.