At best, its only benefit is cosmetic and bare oxidized aluminum is
fairly invisible as it is. Attempts to "camouflage" it only attract
the eye.

I had some surprising results with flat black paint on antennas.

Would you believe people walking right by a 2 x 3' horn antenna, mounted at
eye level, and not noticing it? Another foot closer, and they would have
walked right into it.

Somehow, flat black makes things "dissapear" against normal backgrounds.
Once you know it's there, you see it.

White paint is much more obvious. We had calls within days after replacing
a repeater antenna. The replacement was in a 1.5" diameter radome, and the
closest viewing point where you can actually see the antenna is about half a
mile away, due to the location of the antenna on the roof, and the height of
the building relative to the surrounding buildings.

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 13:11:23 -0500, "Dave VanHorn"
wrote:
Somehow, flat black makes things "dissapear" against normal backgrounds.
Once you know it's there, you see it.

Hi Dave,

Now the issue becomes what is a "normal background?" Especially for
an antenna. Almost every color is darker than the sky and lends the
eye catching feature of drawing attention to it. It took years for
the Army to accept that lighting up large equipment located visually
against the sky (like on a ridge line) made it "disappear."

Oxidized aluminum does a very effective job of reflecting the
neighboring colors without specular hi-lights and thus blending in
quite well.

In reality, such disappearing acts arrive only through the viewer
becoming so used to seeing it that they are no longer notable.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

In reality, such disappearing acts arrive only through the viewer
becoming so used to seeing it that they are no longer notable.

With the flat black, I had the opposite experience.
I had people standing within arm's reach, of a large antenna, mounted at eye
level, asking me where the antenna is.
Once they saw it, they could always see it.

Very spooky.

Obviously it's at least partially psychological.

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 14:28:38 -0500, "Dave VanHorn"
wrote:
Obviously it's at least partially psychological.

You shoulda asked them to point at the air duct. Their arms would've
sprung up automatically to the horn. Not seeing an "antenna" does not
make the antenna invisible. :-)

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

"Richard Clark" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 14:28:38 -0500, "Dave VanHorn"
wrote:
Obviously it's at least partially psychological.

You shoulda asked them to point at the air duct. Their arms would've
sprung up automatically to the horn. Not seeing an "antenna" does not
make the antenna invisible. :-)

You had to be there. We were talking about the antenna, shape size etc, the
people knew what they were looking for, and had seen unpainted versions
recently.