The authors have investigated the transmission properties and defect characteristics of layer-by-layer metallic photonic crystals. They have demonstrated experimentally that the metallicity gap of these crystals extends to an upper band-edge frequency, and no lower edge was detected down to 2 GHz. The defect structures built around these crystals exhibited high transmission peak amplitudes (100%) and high Q factors (2250). The crystals with low filling ratios (around 1-2%) were tested and were still found to possess metallic photonic crystal properties. These crystals exhibited high reflection rates within the metallicity gap and reasonable defect mode characteristics. A power enhancement factor of 190 was measured for the electromagnetic (EM) wave within planar cavity structures, by placing a monopole antenna inside the defect volume. These measurements show that detectors embedded inside a metallic photonic crystal can be used as frequency selective resonant cavity enhanced (RCE) detectors with increased sensitivity and efficiency when compared to conventional detectors.