Here is a link to my photos if any one is interested:

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...threadid=87975

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...threadid=88114

Yes, the ashtray has been butchered to accomodate the H2A and be hidden behind the door

 

Nice.
Can you still close the ashtray door? I guess you won't be smoking...heh heh.
There can't be any metallic paint on your antenna - hope there isn't. (?)

The new Kenwood Sirius H2A unit is great, from what I've been able to tell. It lets you see what's currently playing on some of the other channels, very cool feature.
Biggest problem I've had with satellite radio so far is the need for scrolling around and fiddling with the channels and trying to see artist/title while driving. It's way more dangerous than using a cell phone - major pain in the a$$. I can easily see myself rear-ending someone when some unexpected situation comes up one day when I've let my guard down. The manufacturers need to do something about this - better displays and controls. (Any manufacturers out there listening???)

 

Nope.. absolutely RED has no metal flakes ..and it isn't a lead based paint either....

YES, of course I can still close the door.. it functions perfectly...

Yeah, I never did take up smoking so I had no use for that area anyway.... LOL....

...and since the arm rest has an outlet, I still have another avenue for my laptop (passanger), charging my phone or radar detector


Also, the H2A allows you to display up to 4 lines (channel, artist, song, album) so I'm looking forward to that....



I'll update (hopefully) after Saturday when I get more done...

 

Just to clarify the effect of metallic paint on satellite radio antennas, I recently tested two identical Sirius antennas side-by-side using the temporary arrangement shown below. One antenna was plain, the other painted Sandstone Beige Metallic Clearcoat 4K9 by www.colormatchantenna.com.

Result: There was no difference. The very few places that had drop-outs as I drove around town (such as under trees or in the Hollywood hills) occurred using either antenna. Conclusion: Metallic paint has no significant effect on Sirius satellite radio reception.

 

Interesting experiment. I think it would be more correct to say that there may not be any *practical* difference in reception due to the metallic paint. I'll bet that if we looked at actual signal integrity, strength, etc.within the receiver, we'd probably see a difference. The receiver may be working harder to reconstruct the signal from the painted antenna, and it's hard to tell how much harder the forward error correction circuitry is working. Obviously, when you get a dropout, the receiver could not correct for the loss in signal, probably because the level has fallen beneath a threshold. There may be a slight difference in audio quality when the signal is still capable of being received/corrected. This would be almost impossible to measure correctly, since it depends on too many variables, including environmental factors that vary from hour to hour.

On an even more trivial note, may also depend on how dense the metal flakes are in the paint, and probably even the size and shape of them.

 

That's what I was trying to say when I said "Metallic paint has no significant effect... ". I'm just trying to advise anyone that might come across this thead that you can use metallic paint (as shown in the closeup below).

You may have noticed that newer Hondas and Acuras have painted antennas, too (including metallic shades).