How to hid antennas?

[johncruce223]

I’ve seen plenty of planes with the antennas hidden, I don’t know how it’s done, which antennas need to be used, does the reception decrease somehow??

 

TIA

[kortopates]

No reception loss. But what antenna(s) are we talking about? and what model Mooney.

But as an example, I have my nav antennas in my wing tips and my marker beacon antenna in the belly pan. But can't really do it with vertically polarized antenna's for Com or Transponder nor any point in in trying with a GPS antenna nor ELT antenna. 

Edited May 11, 2022 by kortopates

[johncruce223]

Wellllll, it’s kinda a Cessna 310. I’m restoring the airplane completely and didn’t want to have any antennas if possible. 

[EricJ]

2 hours ago, johncruce223 said:

Wellllll, it’s kinda a Cessna 310. I’m restoring the airplane completely and didn’t want to have any antennas if possible. 

Totally possible.    Lots of airplanes fly with no radios and just stay out of airspace where they're required.   AG planes and old airplanes like J-3s do this all the time.  It does restrict where you can fly and at what altitudes.   Make certain that your C310 doesn't have a requirement in the POH or TCDS or elsewhere that it has to have a comm radio.   IFR will not be possible.

If you want to keep comm capability or have VORs or a transponder, ADS-B, glideslope, GPS, etc., then it gets much more difficult.    As mentioned, the comm antennas are vertically polarized at  VHF, so hiding them in a way that they're functional isn't practical.   The tip tanks on a 310 make it difficult to hide the VOR antennas in the wingtips.   Some airplanes with fiberglass bellies manage to hide the transponder/ADS-B/etc., inside there, but I don't think that's possible with a C310.  

Generally, there's a reason antennas are exposed on nearly all airplanes.   It's very difficult to make them work without some performance degradation when hidden, even behind fiberglass, although some fiberglass structures make it possible, there's just some loss of sensitivity.

 

[PT20J]

Cirrus is composite and has antennas sticking out everywhere. I believe there’s a conductive layer in the composite which would shield the antennas if located internally.

[carusoam]

Their anti lightning layer is a bit problematic for a few things….

-a-