Carbon fiber and radio signals

ESK8 Electronics
1

To those people who have carbon enclosure and decks, does the carbon fiber affect the signal of your remote/bluetooth?

2

yes it does.

1 Like
3

carbon fiber is conductive, so a closed carbon fiber box essentially creates a faraday cage which makes transmission of any kind of radio signal (bluetooth included)

however, a bottom-mounted CF enclosure on a nonconductive deck (like wood) would in theory be fine

3 Likes
4

I wonder how Evolve’s carbon gt is set up and how the hyberbeast deck tackles this problem

I’m thinking of reinforcing my deck with carbon fiber then making an enclosure for it. But that would make a closed carbon fiber box.

5

to my knowledge those run the antennae outside somehow, or have breaks in their CF. you could just run your antenna out of the enclosure

6

I’m using a nano x, there’s no antenna on the reciever to my knowledge

I know the mini remote reciever has a little piece of wire coming out of it, thats the antenna right?

7

I’m not sure why it doesn’t have an antenna either. @onloop please enlighten us

8

Yes the wire on the mini RC receiver is the antenna.

There have been discussions on helicopter forums about carbon fiber interfering with RF signals. On the 1st edition of the Raptor1, Which had a CF deck with a CF lid there where problems with the receiver to remote connection. Enertion was able to correct the problem by replacing the CF lid with a Fiberglass lid.

1 Like
9

I wonder if there is a way to add an antenna to the nano x remote. With the mini remote I can solder on more wire and lead it outside the enclosure

10

You can’t just add a piece of wire. You need to calculate the length for a quarter wave, half wave or full wave antenna. 2.4ghz remote. Formula: 300 divided by frequency in MHz = antenna length in meters. 300/2450= .12 meters or 12cm for a full wave antenna 6cm for a half wave antenna 3cm for a quarter wave antenna Had to learn this for my Amateur Radio license.

5 Likes
11

Yes. yes. yes it does. yes.

it was one of my major bugbears of the R1 Raptor deck. I just ended up mounting my receiver really close to the hole where the battery gauge was.

2 Likes
12

Damn I didn’t know that antennas were this complicated, learning something new everyday

@lowGuido I wonder if mounting it next to the xt90 antispark would be okay enough, I’m not going to have a battery indicator since I’ll be using bluetooth.

13

tuning your antenna is more critical for transmitting but it also helps for receiving.