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Metallic paint affect on GPS reception ???

Larry DeCamp

Well Known Member
Both my antenna are under the cowl. There is no doubt conductive stuff will degrade the signal reception. Any pireps on metallic paint over your GPS antenna ?
 
Yes, metallic paint degrades signal. I had to move mine from the cowl. Its pretty easy to test watching your signal strength and cover a sample over the antenna.
 
Check the paint TDS. Most metallic flake these days is Mica. Definitely not a metal, though I cannot speculate on it's ability to pass GPS signals.
 
This is relevant to my interests. My antennas are mostly concealed under the roof of the 10.

I was in love with Mazda "soul red" 46V until I found out its beautiful depth comes from aluminum base coat with translucent red color coat. I will have to scrap that idea. Wonder if there's an easy way to see which pearly automobile colors are metal flake and which are mica... ?
 
On both of my planes I had metallic paint on the wingtip and did not have any adverse effect on my GPS that I had noticed.
 
This is relevant to my interests. My antennas are mostly concealed under the roof of the 10.

I was in love with Mazda "soul red" 46V until I found out its beautiful depth comes from aluminum base coat with translucent red color coat. I will have to scrap that idea. Wonder if there's an easy way to see which pearly automobile colors are metal flake and which are mica... ?
Bill,

Many years ago at work, I had a piece of Silicon Carbide fabric and a piece of graphite fabric and couldn't easily distinguish them apart. Since Silicon Carbide isn't conductive and Graphite is, I tossed a small thread of one into a microwave oven and turned it on and off quickly. Then I did the same with the other piece. The graphite sparked and the Silicon Carbide didn't. You may find the same can be done with your paints to quickly determine which is mica and which is metal. It's probably not great for the microwave, but not much different than reheating your coffee and realizing, as sparks fly, that the pretty design on it is made from conductive paint.

Or, you can take Kahuna's great idea. You do miss the pretty sparks that way though :)

Regards,
Rob
 
Since Silicon Carbide isn't conductive and Graphite is, I tossed a small thread of one into a microwave oven and turned it on and off quickly. Then I did the same with the other piece. The graphite sparked and the Silicon Carbide didn't.

That's clever! My compliments sir. I love practical.
 
This is relevant to my interests. My antennas are mostly concealed under the roof of the 10.

I was in love with Mazda "soul red" 46V until I found out its beautiful depth comes from aluminum base coat with translucent red color coat. I will have to scrap that idea. Wonder if there's an easy way to see which pearly automobile colors are metal flake and which are mica... ?

Call your paint shop. For any color, they have an ingredient list and quantity. Some are solid pigments, others are pearl components (typically non-metallic) and flake components (sometimes metallic, bot often mica and others).

The tech may only know the name of the components and you will have to make some calls to see if that is metallic or not.

Larry
 
It's fun to irradiate something in a microwave oven to evaluate its dielectric properties, but a material doesn't have to catch fire to still be capable of absorbing enough RF to interfere with a weak signal like GPS. Kahuna's test is more realistic.

Dave
 
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