I spent the last 3 days basically trying to decide the best location for mounting the ELT unit. It was a number of trial and error attempts. Finally yesterday I came to the conclusion that the best and strongest location would be between the upper stiffener and the upper longeron behind the luggage bulkhead. I called VANS technical support and he told me he did the same thing on his airplane that I am suggesting. He can't see any problem with my suggestion. The original recommendation from VANS, which came with the mounting kit, was to mount the unit between the upper and lower stiffeners behind the luggage bulkhead. This has two problems; one, it is almost impossible to match drill the lower stiffener to the mounting bracket because of the sharp curvature of the fuselage skin below mounting bracket and two, the rudder cable behind the mounting bracket can potentially create interference, a bad situation. After deciding on the location I prepared the mounting plate. I used the smaller mounting plate that came with the ELT unit to locate the platenuts and installed the platenuts on the mounting plate. Next step was to match drill the 4 holes on the mounting plate on the middle stiffener and cleco as I progressed. This was a lot simpler than the original location.
