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Painting an 11-meter dipole white to blend in with house

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FPR1981

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I built my friend a dipole out of 18-2 lamp cord and it performs wonderfully. He has it outdoors strung across an add-on roof. At 2 miles he's dinging me with a solid 10 S-units.

He wants to camo the antenna by painting it white. I've never painted an antenna before. Is this a no no, or can he do that safely?
 

PACNWDude

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The main thing to watch out for when painting an antenna, is metal in the paint. Many spray on paints have metal which will be a problem for an antenna. Paints without metals also do not tend to weather very well. For antennas like what you describe, white heat shrink tubing may be the best option.
 

jwt873

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I'd just go to an automotive store and pick up a small roll of wire with light blue, or white insulation and use that in place of the lamp cord.
 

FPR1981

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I'd just go to an automotive store and pick up a small roll of wire with light blue, or white insulation and use that in place of the lamp cord.

Or down to the hardware store and get some white 18-2. They sell it for the same price.
 

prcguy

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Painting a wire antenna or an insulated wire antenna is different than painting the radome of a fiberglass VHF or UHF antenna. Even if you paint the insulated wire with metallic cold galvanizing it won't affect the antenna enough to worry about. Painting with a non metallic paint or one without carbon dust as used in some black paints does absolutely nothing to a insulated wire antenna and on a bare wire antenna it will electrically lengthen the wire by a fraction of a percent. A lot of paint gooped onto bare wire would have the same effect as changing from bare to insulated wire and its very very small at HF frequencies.
 
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