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Vinal Wrap's effect on LEDs and Comms (a good news story)

scrollF4

Moderator, Asst. Line Boy
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So I've been flying my newly-wrapped RV-7A KELLI GIRL (thanks again Scott Farnsworth and AircraftWraps.com). She flies as good as she now looks, but right up front I've encountered a totally new issue involving my LED nav/beacon lights and my VHF comms.

The airplane:
http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=132000

The lights: AeroLED Pulsar nav/strobes in the wings, and the SunTail position/strobe in the tail.

The radio: PS Engineering PAR100EX. (BTW, my comms 2 is the Dynon SkyView VHF, but this problem didn't impact that radio).

The problem: With the strobes and nav/position lights turned on, I got terrible noise on the PAR100EX radio on all frequencies. To be clear, it's not through the intercom function: It's through the radio when that radio is selected. The PAR100EX radio transmitted clearly, but the noise was excessive in receive mode. My friend Blake Graham and I checked both VHF antennae to be sure they were mounted properly (the AircraftWraps folks had to remove them for the vinal wrap job). Yes, they were properly remounted and grounded to the ground plane. We also swapped both antennae to see if the problem migrated from Comm 1 to 2....no dice.

Knowing that AircraftWraps also had to remove/reinstall the wingtips to wrap the wings, I checked the AeroLED connections at each end. Per AeroLED's installation instructions, I originally installed these lights using a shielded cable and used the shielding as the black wire ground run from the lights to a single common central ground point (the firewall). The instructions also had me run an indendent ground from each Pulsars' mounting chassis to a local ground point on each wingtip. These all looked properly connected after the wrap, but I still had that blasted racket in my headset.

I finally gave AeroLED a call, described the situation, and was surprised by their response (it's good, trust me). Their tech guy made this observation:
By wrapping the whole airplane in vinyl, I've basically insulated the aircraft, like shrink tube on a wire. By doing this, I've changed the airframe's impedence.

The solution: He recommended I disconnect the local chassis ground on each wingtip. I did that, and it worked perfectly. Who'da thunk it?

So my advice to all future aircraft wrappers: If you have comms issues after the wrap, and have LEDs installed like mine, you might try what I did.
 
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Interesting. Since I will be using the same lights and wrapping the Mistress as well, I'll make a note when I'm connecting the lights up. Good info.
 
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