LGC-16W external antenna

The last couple of days I have been experimenting with my Elite 5M baja external antenna.. Since I didn't want a white booger on my all black truck.

***disclaimer***
I am still testing this mod out and do not take any responsibility if you ruin your external antenna.

The first thing I did is research about painting gps antennas on the internet. Since there is not a lot of information on painting external gps antennas. I decided to side on the side of caution first..

I hooked up the gps unit and external antenna and got a baseline signal strength and satellites. Knowing this would this would vary too much. I said screw it and covered the white booger with blue painters tape and began painting. I used krylon fusion flat black paint, very light coats.
Once dried I hooked up everything again, and there was a little delay acquiring satellites.. I started to worry that I would be stuck with a white booger on my black truck. I turned the unit off and tried a warm start. Surprise almost instantly locked on... Hot damn!

So, I have thrown caution in the wind and ripped off the tape. And painted the white booger with a very light coat.. Waiting about half hour or so before applying another light coat... I am going to let it dry over night before testing it out. Hopefully, I just didn't ruin the external antenna and throw 80 bucks out the window...

I will test it out and post pictures when I am done...



-Greg

Here is pictures of the antenna after painting... I still haven't decided exact placement yet...

Okay, it was so stealthy I had to go cheat and go to the last pic and see where you had it. Nice work!!!!

That is the whole point... The stock white antenna stuck out like a sore thumb. Just inviting unneeded attention..

-Greg

How does it work being painted? I would imagine you'd get the least amount of interference mounting up on the roof.

From a cold start it lags a little bit locking on.. SO far it is getting a good signal after being painted.. I am still waiting on my outlaw gps mount to finish installing the unit, and deciding on final location of antenna.

I am going to play around with it a little more this afternoon and get some pictures of the elite 5m with external antenna readings and internal antenna readings...

Here is a couple quick pictures of gps status...

Internal antenna.. Gps unit on dash
View attachment 6908

External antenna painted (black booger passenger side cowl)
View attachment 6909

The HDOP (horizontal dilution of precision) is better with external antenna than internal antenna..

The SNR is better with internal antenna verses external. Don't know if this is because of placement of external antenna or painting..

So it is looking good for painting white booger, still need more tests before I am confident on recommending this mod..

-Greg

LVdezertdawg said:

Okay, it was so stealthy I had to go cheat and go to the last pic and see where you had it. Nice work!!!!

Click to expand...

I couldn't see it either, too busy checking out those dope headlights !

Ducati said:

I couldn't see it either, too busy checking out those dope headlights !

Click to expand...

Definately, pulls the truck together! Thanks to your amazing work!

-Greg

Nice I think I'm gonna have to paint mine as well not a fan of te white here's a pic of how I'm going to mount mine once it gets here I'm still trying to figure out how they ran the wires haha I'll let you know and post some pics when I figure it all out