Carbon Fiber frames bad for radio reception?

I understand carbon fiber can block radio signals.  However, I see a lot of carbon fiber frames out there.  Does CF block radio signals any more than aluminum does?  

I can imagine that completely shrouding sensors and antennae in CF would be bad, but making the motor arms out of it might not be detrimental.  The difference between that and aluminum arms could be negligeable, non-existant, or really bad, for all I know.  

So, I wanted to open the topic for discussion and see if anyone out there has some words of wisdom on the subject.  I'm particularly interested in Y6 designs, by the way.  Thanks.

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  • Carbon can have interference effects... I just drill a hole in my frame and then have the antenna hand out the bottom so I have no possibilities of any problems.  Though people do say this about carbon... I'm not sure about how thick the carbon needs to be before this is an issue?  I do know that all of the ray and sonar domes on craft are made of fiberglass to avoid this issue I have plenty of carbon but not sure how I would test the signal strength to see how many plys will effect radio transmissions  

  • I have not studied using much carbon fiber yet, but I think you may be blindly stumbling upon something very good here! lol.

    If carbon fiber does block signals to any real degree, then all you have to do is keep any receiving hardware (antenna, etc) out and accessible to reception, but you know how they say to mount a GPS or other antennas away from the motors to avoid interference??? You could change all that by a clever use of carbon fiber to prevent that interference maybe.

    That means that you would not necessarily have to have a gps/antenna/etc sticking out or above the craft's frame, which is good for protecting such from hang-ups, crashes, etc, and making the craft more druable.

    Like another person suggested, you can maybe hang antennas, etc out the bottom, and have your motors/rotors up higher which is normal anyway. - GIve it some thought, you could make serious changes to popular drone design.

  • Hi , i flown an aluminum quad but for safe reason my antennas are under the metal arms

    some people says its best if you put them in plastic tube like drinking straw and have them hang outside  lower from the frame. to minimize interference. and best use full range radio with a satellite antenna to get the optimal reception.

    note: most UHF antennas are Aluminum so that makes the quad like one of them. in fact the arms are acting like a satellite dish for some reason. wonder if reflexive signal in close range ..seems not too much a problem.

    seems if CF blocks signal, Aluminum reflex them

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