Nick Funk wrote in message ...
I am not an expert! But I have several friends, both of which are
ex-military pilots. One owns a C310 with radar and stormscope and the
other friend has a C210 with radar and stormscope.

Both agree that given a choice they would rather have the stormscope
over radar any day. They reason they said is that the stormscope
displays lightning and electrical disturbance and that is exact where
the worst convective air is. Radar only shows where water is. Simply put
convective air kills and rain doesn't.


Kind of a funky argument Nick (sorry, couldn't resist. :-)
Interesting theory though, haven't heard that one before. The biggest
thing to avoid is the third stage of a thunderstorms' life: the mature
stage. Characterized by heavy precip (rain and hail) lightening,
strong up and downdrafts within the cell and strong surface winds etc.
Either means of detection will let you know that something's there.
But wx radar, in the right hands will yield more info about how tall
the cells are (and that's what's going to kill you, a powerfull cell
that towers up to say 30-50K in the northern hemisphere that for some
reason, has no excessive positive ions on the bottom of it for the
moment.) What I want to know when I'm crossing a line is: which is
the tallest set of cells so I can avoid that direction all together.
Getting "boxed in" happens to everybody sooner or later in X-C GA IFR,
and it would be nice to be able to know which choice is the lesser
evil and then go around the upwind side of the shortest cell if
possible.

After lots of guys get out of their units, we retrain them and they
become staunch advocates of full wx radar. I see it all the time.
Disclaimer: I have not used much GA radar so I am talking about a
three degree beam with a lot of juice and a big dish.

Keep the pointed end forward,

pacplyer