Also note the ground pad stuck over the antenna. Functional, or simply a convenient place to store a ground pad?

Also note the ground pad stuck over the antenna. Functional, or simply a convenient place to store a ground pad?

The sleeping mat over the antenna is just a convenient place to store them. It has nothing to do with functionality or protecting anyone from burns. I have never seen nor heard of an antenna base getting hot and burning anyone in my 23 years of active duty service.

You put 4 soldiers in a HMMWV with all their gear, weapons, pogey bait, cases of irradiated milk, my cases of Pepsi, ramen soup, little boxes of cereal, ammo, water cans, fuel cans, and for us our jammers and direction finding equipment, you find places to store stuff out of the way. And sleeping pads take up a lot of room. That's why I got an air mattress, they fold flat and out of the way. Sticking sleeping pads on the antenna was an old school way of getting them out of the vehicle. Never had or heard of an antenna getting hot unless it was sun baked. Not even when we had our jammers at high power. Plus putting a piece of foam rubber around any type of heat source would be a very bad idea.

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Also note the ground pad stuck over the antenna. Functional, or simply a convenient place to store a ground pad?

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They actually protect you from getting burned. At least the stickers on the antennas warn you not to make contact with them at risk of injury.

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Also note the ground pad stuck over the antenna. Functional, or simply a convenient place to store a ground pad?

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They actually protect you from getting burned. At least the stickers on the antennas warn you not to make contact with them at risk of injury.

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Here’s the stickers that come in the kits to install the antenna mount on M151’s (1:1 scale).

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Also note the ground pad stuck over the antenna. Functional, or simply a convenient place to store a ground pad?

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They actually protect you from getting burned. At least the stickers on the antennas warn you not to make contact with them at risk of injury.

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Here’s the stickers that come in the kits to install the antenna mount on M151’s (1:1 scale).

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It's not a warning for a thermal burn but an electrical or RF burn hazard. As stated above an antenna base doesn't get hot. Our jammers put out a lot of RF power, far more than any vehicle radio, but the antennas never got hot. The sticker gives you the key, contact with antenna or lead while in use can cause burns. That is when the current is flowing and touching it can cause the transmitted power to flow thru you to ground and that causes burns. The sleeping pads aren't going to protect you from getting burned because the leads come up thru the bottom of the mount which already has metal shields to protect it. And the pad is only a couple of feet wide so most of the antenna is exposed and can be touched. Look at it this way, if pads protected you from getting burn from an antenna the military would tell you to cover the antenna with them and never remove them but the military doesn't. On the other hand if the antenna was a source of thermal heat the military would forbid the placing of flammable material (and those pads burn) on antennas and would punish soldier for doing it but they don't.

Placing sleeping pads on antennas is nothing more than a way to get a piece of annoyingly large equipment out of a crowded vehicle. That's it, nothing protective about it.