Tips Wiki How to Wrap the Antenna Tube

From Heli-Wiki

This is just one way to wrap the antenna around the tube, and the way I ended going with for use with the super skids. There is a lot to the way you wrap your antenna so that you keep the range you need and minimize interference. The main thing you will want to do is test range your heli before you actually fly it after you have completed your wrap. (create a page for ranging and antenna tips and put the link here)

I ended up using small orthodontics elastics to help hold the wire in place. This is nice because then you can remove it if you want to change back to the stock skids for better aerobatic flight for example, or if you needed to change out your receiver.

These are the small elastics that I used to hold the wire on the antenna tube. I got them from my brother that wears braces. It also shows the positioning of the tube and the wire. I decided to extend the tube farther to the front to sort of split the distance between the front and the back to keep the antenna close to the heli and to minimize vibration (if it were sticking all the way out one side). I also kept it back far enough so that if I came in for a steep landing that it would not be in front of the skids or be able to catch on the ground.

This picture shows how I routed the wire up over the CF rod that holds the canopy on. I did that so that the wire basically followed the frame without being wrapped around it incase I need to get it off sometime in the future, then I wont have to completely undo the antenna to get them off. I tied a taut-line knot in the antenna wire right next to the hole for the tube. This is to keep the wire in place and keep the tube from sliding back and forth once it is installed. This knot is ideal because it doesn't kink the wire and it gets tighter the tighter it is pulled. It does need some tension to keep it tight.

That brings us to our next section. What I did was double over the elastic on the tube (put it on, pull one end out, twist, and then put the loop over the tube). Then I took a surgical clamp and grabbed one of the wraps of elastic (the reason I only grabbed one is because if you grab both of them the elastic tends to slide, and that's not what we want, but if you keep one of the elastics gripping the tube, and one gripping the wire it works out quite well) and pulled up on it enough so that I could feed the wire through. I pulled it tight enough to keep the knot tight, but not tight enough to short out the antenna wire.

Then I just evenly twisted the wire down the rest of the tube leaving space (from what I read, and I haven't done any testing as of yet, is that small coils of wire can actually cancel out each others signal, so proper spacing is a good idea).

This picture shows how I used half of a taut-line and the same elastic technique to hold the coiled wire tight around the antenna tube.

I then took the remaining part of the wire and fed it down the antenna tube making sure to leave a small loop big enough so that it didn't kink the antenna, but small enough so that the loop wont hook on things.

This is the picture of the final product =)

Hopefully that gives some good ideas on how to wrap the antenna around the tube

mrasmm

PS feel free to PM me either on RCU or RCgroups if you have any questions or comments