Here's the VOR antenna. This one's the trivial one. The only question I had about this was that since I had already riveted the nutplates onto the wing tip, could I link the antenna to ground via a wire instead of it being inherently grounded. Bob Archer replied that it's very important that it be grounded, and to quote him, "wires are not good." So I bit the bullet and drilled out five nutplates (no big deal). Here's the antenna positioned on the top surface of the right wing tip.
A few minutes later it was riveted in place with new nutplates. I threw out (not really, but I got rid of) the three #4 screws and wire clips along the front edge of the antenna. Since I'm mounting my antennas well aft of the strobe/position lights, those wires won't cross the antenna and should not interfere at all. So screw the clips. Not necessary. I also don't like the way Bob suggests that the antenna gets attached to the wing tip via those three screws. The only reason he does that is to allow you to hold the screw when removing the nuts. No nuts, no need for screws. I'm just gonna epoxy/glass this puppy to the wing tip. No need to be intrusive and drill it!
Minor sidebar that took up major time. My elevators were not balanced weight-wise. Using the double counterweight per elevator sandwich method (old style counterweights...recent RV-7 kits have a totally different counterweight design), my right elevator was overweighted. So yesterday I started drill out lead to get it balanced. I was really surprised how much lead had to be removed to get everything balanced. In the end, I had removed close to half the inboard counterweight. So I removed the elevator (ugh), filled over the nasty holes, and rerigged the elevators. Took the better part of the morning. Now everything's perfectly balanced. The irony is that once I paint, I'm going to have to add lead again to compensate for the weight of the paint. Oh, well. Needs to be balanced now...don't want to risk flutter.
Here's the backup COM antenna in the left wing tip (in case it wasn't clear, I have one totally reliable bent whip antenna on the belly for COM1, and the wing tip COM antenna is only for COM2, a backup). Anyway, this photo shows the left wing tip upside down. I drilled out five nutplates and riveted them back in with the antenna. I epoxied a strip of 1/4" foam on the top of the wing tip, which will serve as a support for the top of the antenna. Bob Archer confirmed that many people do in fact bend the antennas in an arch, and that it should work fine like that.
After this I fiberglassed both the COM and VOR antennas in place. No photos...you'll see tomorrow.
This is my marker beacon antenna. It's a piece of coax with 40" of the shielding stripped off. Gotta love a dirt cheap solution -- especially when it works just as well as something you'd actually pay big bucks for. Basically, 40" of any conductor is considered a fully functional marker beacon antenna. So I'll just bond this to the bottom of the right wing tip, add a BNC connector, and that's that. By the way, I'm saving the shielding that I stripped (intact)...it can come in really handy if you ever need to make ground jumper wires or whatever. Any time you need a wire that doesn't need insulation, shielding can do the trick.
I installed adel clamps on the outboard wing rib to hold the strobe and position light wires so they don't flop around in flight. I installed MATE-N-LOK connectors on all the connections.
I hooked everything up, clecoed the wing tips on, and fired up all my lights. It was awesome. I turned the hangar lights off and had a little light show in there. Landing lights alternating, strobe lights flickering, position lights glowing. Gotta love when everything works the way it's supposed to.