Radar Antenna

Can pilots adjust the tilt angle of their WXR antenna while it’s (in operation) sweeping from side to side, in an effort to find the “core” of a storm? I have the impression that this is possible because of a seemingly great importance for awareness on the vertical profile the storm, since the weather radar beam naturally gives a horizontal (“slice”) profile. In an interesting way, this reminds me of a doctor using a CAT scanner...steering its beam, to draw a three-dimensional model of a patient’s affected body section. If the WXR’s beam is steerable, vertically by the pilot (while the radar set steers the beam horizontally), I’d like to know where the control for this (capability) is in the cockpit.

Yes, the tilt control is on the weather radar control panel. Some installations also have an auto-tilt feature. You are not so much trying to find the "core of the storm" as you are trying to determine what weather exists at your altitude and below (above if climbing, possibly, although the aircraft is already "tilted" upward; use of the tilt control would depend on the installation). Farther from the aircraft, at high altitude, you might paint a return which is not ground clutter but which disappears as it gets closer. This is usually due to the return being far below the aircraft. The dimensions of the beam pick it up beyond, say, 60 or 70 miles, but it is too far below the beam as it gets closer, even at an appropriate tilt. Remember the beam is not of a constant width/height for all distances from the aircraft.

2007-07-24 00:56:42 by wingless_pilot

AN/FPS-508 Radar Antenna used in NORAD PineTree line. Park at North Bay Ontario Canada. Most were in service from 1950s to end of 1980s See: The ...

I recently installed SAT radio in my car, it works great with the internal glass mounted antenna, only problem is now my radar detector has a constant alert. I called Escort and they said that yes a SAT radio antenna can cause interferance with the radar detector. Anyone know how to fix without having to switch to an external antenna?

Move your detector out of the windshield area.

2009-08-05 09:07:30 by BigBen

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supposing i had an ESM receiver on an aircraft and detected a radar transmission from a ship and the ESM receiver gave me the scan rate as one of the Radar parameters, how do we use the scan rate to calculate the Radar antenna rotation rate?

If the radar antenna is being used to detect passive emissions then the rate is the same. More likely, however, is the use of a separate ESM receiver suite independent of the antenna rotation rate. In the best case, the ESM data can be used to direct the radar to areas of increased interest.

2008-05-04 07:03:26 by shashi_103

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also, does the gain control alter the outgoing signal or the reflected signal?

-Horizontal polarization can be used.
-The return signal can be 'blanked' for the first short period to ignore areas close to the radar.
- Successive return signals can be averaged (or ANDed) together so that only targets which were there over several scans are displayed. Clutter tends to be random, so is filtered out in this process leaving the target return clear.

I would expect the gain control to affect the received signal.
A single, powerful pulse is transmitted.
The receiver then starts to receive responses:
Strong returns close to the transmitter would be received first, so receive gain is turned down. Then, as the returns are received from further out, the signal becomes weaker (due to the Tx and Rx signals spreading out from their respective point sources), so gain needs to be higher to receive a clear signal.
The gain signal would be an up-ramp (low gain toward high gain) per receive period in between transmissions.

hth

2008-02-09 21:25:18 by Ken J

I have (what seems to be) an old rooftop antenna that was there when we moved in. At our house we have DirecTV, but in my room I have an antenna with a converter box. Is there anyway to use the antenna on the top of my house? I get like 6 channels with DTV, and 2 of them are weather/radar. Would I get more with the rooftop antenna?

If the rooftop antenna is in good condition (not bent or rusty) there is no reason you can't use it with your converter box. Depending on how good it's working and if it's pointed in the correct direction, you may get more channels, too.

2009-01-01 20:54:57 by Alex Briggs