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[January 4, 2014]


We received a few inches of snow the other day. It's cold here - in the teens and 20's, so I didn't know how much melting had taken place at the airport. Today was the only good forecasted day to go flying this weekend, so I ventured off to the airport.


This was a very dry snow, and there was some wind associated with the storm. I had a little snow sneak into the hangar.



The main reason I wanted to fly was to see how stable my new GoPro mount is. The airports taxiways were pretty clear. It was easy to navigate around on the ground.


I decided to put the mount through its paces, so I did some aerobatics. Ailerons rolls here (notice the aileron deflection).


Coming down on the backside of a loop.


Low level flying over the local reservoir.


And short final on a beautiful day. While the still snapshots of the video turned out great, there is a lot of vibration in the video. I need to redo the way the camera is attached to the fuselage. There is just way too much play at this location with the prop wash hitting the camera.


Project #2 was to get my Garmin GDL-37 ADS-B receiver wired into the airplane. This receiver must have a GPS signal for it to work. I suppose this is for it to calculate vectors to traffic it picks up. So an external antenna is required since I am mounting my GDL-39 under the panel where the unit by itself cannot receive GPS signals. I did some research on the best GPS antennas out there that work with the Garmin units. I settled on the Gilsson Amplified External MCX GPS Antenna (Model: MCX1M09B090-AWMG). It was highly rated at Amazon and for $20, it was fairly priced. It was also a good size for where I wanted to mount it.


This antenna has a magnetic base which I didn't really care for or need. After removing the sticker under the antenna, I found it was quite easy to remove the magnets. Also, there are 6 accessible screws that could be used for mounting this antenna.


No more magnets!


I am going with my tried and true mounting method for GPS antennas - Red RTV.


3 GPS's! That's ridiculous. I am not thrilled with having to add this GPS antenna, but to make the GDL-39 happy, it is necessary. So now I have four GPS's in my airplane:
1) Garmin 430W
2) Garmin 18X
3) Garmin GDL-39 via Gilsson MCX1M09B090
4) Internal GPS on the Nexus 7 tablet

And not to mention the built in GPS on my phone that I usually carry with me!


The hardest part of this GPS installation was adding the wire through the adel clamps and into the cabin. It was too cold out and I am too sore (I went skiing yesterday) to crawl under the panel to finish up the installation, but the hard work is done! I'll wait for a warmer day to finish the rest of this installation.

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Last Modified: October 5, 2024