Going Inside-Out

Building and maintaining an airplane is a series of monumental steps separated by a long train of mundanities. Make great strides only to be held back or derailed by some seemingly picayune detail that requires more than its fair share of your time and consideration. Stuff happens.

And so it is with my Glastar Sportsman. Since early 2006, when I began using it for more than local test flights and general goofing-off near home, I have been ever so slightly annoyed by its com-radio performance. While it’s hard to fault the features of the Garmin SL30 that is my primary com radio—an Icom handheld is the backup—I’ve long felt that the overall performance was suffering at the hands, er, make that ears of the antenna. Symptoms: Often, flying in the desert Southwest, I would lose communication with air-traffic control when other airplanes at my altitude wouldn’t; twice I had what sounded…

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