My ignorant neophyte first time builder understanding is that I need to create a ground plane connection between all of the avionics antennas with the “silver plate copper coating” and that the DuPont Corlar goes on just before the paint.

Is this correct?  What is the proper order of these things?

Should the avionics antennas be “connected” via the silver plate copper coating before the Corlar is applied?

Does the “copper” get applied directly to the carbon fiber on the belly?  Do I coat the whole underside or paint a “path” between antennas? 

 

Here's what I did.  I have  four antennas on the belly. Transponder, Com1, Com2 and TCAD.  I painted four separate "round" ground planes.  The com's should be 36" dia and the TCAD and Transponder should be 12" dia minimum.  I was able to make the transponder 16" dia, Com1 36" dia, Com2 only 30" dia and TCAD 18" dia.  I painted the silver based paint that you have directly to the carbon.  I masked the surrounding areas and sprayed it on.  I then rolled on WLS primer right up to the ground plane.  The two paints matched in thickness pretty well.  Then you MUST mask the silver based paint for the antenna base.  The antenna base MUST mount directly to the silver paint.  I then sprayed WLS over everything.  All of this painting is done AFTER you are happy with the body work.  Another thing that is important is the distance between the transponder and TCAD should be maximized.  If you hook a tape measure to the firewall flange and measure towards the back of the plane, I have the transponder at 29.25", Com1 at 56.5", TCAD at 85" and Com2 at 131.25".  Com2 wraps around the fuselage (it is not flat).  I spent 3 months trying to decide what was correct.  This is what I decided on.  Oh yes, I did NOT connect the ground planes.  There is a gap between them.  Most of this info came from an ex-military guy who worked on antennas.

Craig Berland

IV-P   N7VG

Engine is in.