What is inside the puck of a VOR/ILS antenna?

tceq24443

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cyberbryan
Electronics for the frequency or just the studs for the cat whiskers? I thought I would find a video where someone had dissected or cut open for educational purposes but have not been able to find one.
 
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Asked the vet if they could x-ray one, since I wanted to whittle away at it to fit inside the top of the v-stab. This is a RAMI AV-532 VOR / LOC / GS ANTENNA.
 

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I don't know all I care about is tuning the freq and dash..dash..beep.beep.dash..beep.beep
 
So like the Morse encoder what could go wrong with the antenna beside breaking off one of the whiskers?
 
Electronics for the frequency or just the studs for the cat whiskers? I thought I would find a video where someone had dissected or cut open for educational purposes but have not been able to find one.

Most likely a "balun" as stated here:


The "cat whisker" type of VOR receive antenna is a dipole, i.e. has two elements and no ground. As such it is considered BALanced. The coaxial cable used to connect it to the receiver is UNbalanced since the outer conductor is connected to ground. For best results a balun should be used to convert from one to the other.
 
Electronics for the frequency or just the studs for the cat whiskers? I thought I would find a video where someone had dissected or cut open for educational purposes but have not been able to find one.
Magic electrons. When the puck cracks, they all leak out and then the antenna becomes unreceptive.
So like the Morse encoder what could go wrong with the antenna beside breaking off one of the whiskers?
Puck cracks, moisture and dirt seeps in creating a path to ground. See above.
 
Most likely a "balun" as stated here:


The "cat whisker" type of VOR receive antenna is a dipole, i.e. has two elements and no ground. As such it is considered BALanced. The coaxial cable used to connect it to the receiver is UNbalanced since the outer conductor is connected to ground. For best results a balun should be used to convert from one to the other.
Yes, that is my understanding as the older antennas, such as on many pipers with an external balun, the signal is radiated to the center conductor via the small unshielded loop at the antenna end and via the open end of the balun end? So, there is not much that can go wrong with the dipole antenna unless it is cracked or the whisker is damaged as there are no "electronics' inside older Piper style antennas such as the Rami AV-12
 
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