Marine Radar in a plane?

Yesterday, as we were once again flying blindly toward unknown weather, Mary
and I lamented the fact that we'll never have radar on board our Pathfinder.
Too expensive to contemplate. Ditto with the "live uplink" stuff that's
just coming on the market.

So, I thought, why not adapt a marine radar unit to aircraft use? Checking
around on-line, it looks like you can get a pretty basic marine radar set up
for less than $2000 -- a tiny percentage of what "aviation" radar would
cost.

Anyone tried this in a home-built plane? What's the range of those units?
Installation?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

I thought marine radar was tuned for seeing objects not weather? Things
like radar bouys and other ATONs, and ships in the fog.

Also, I have to say after having radar for 4 years I find radar useful, but
not critical. You still want to keep 20 miles or so from any storm, and
most of the GA sized units can only accurately depict weather at 40 miles.
Much further and the beam is too big.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:Y7OZa.121718$uu5.17371@sccrnsc04...
Yesterday, as we were once again flying blindly toward unknown weather,
Mary
and I lamented the fact that we'll never have radar on board our
Pathfinder.
Too expensive to contemplate. Ditto with the "live uplink" stuff that's
just coming on the market.

So, I thought, why not adapt a marine radar unit to aircraft use?
Checking
around on-line, it looks like you can get a pretty basic marine radar set
up
for less than $2000 -- a tiny percentage of what "aviation" radar would
cost.

Anyone tried this in a home-built plane? What's the range of those units?
Installation?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:

http://www.cheap*******software.net/

NOT recommended for real time bad weather penetration, but very useful
nevertheless. And used Palm VIIx are dirt cheap these days.

Interesting website (although I never could find any info about what it
actually costs for the service).

Unfortunately it says "coverage in the center of the country is spotty"...
--

It's cheap*******s! It doesn't cost anything!!! (Well, there is a monthly
service for the palm). Ron and I've used it a lot flying all over and haven't
found it spotty, but we've never used it in Iowa :-). For the cost of a used
palm VII and the $$ to hook up the Palm (which also gets you the handy
starbucks locator among other things, it's worth a try. We are looking at the
WSI right now, not only for the up to date weater (cheap*******s in about 15 -
20 minutes old) on the big screen, but also for the up to date, graphical
TFRs which are a real consideration here near DC and with the roaming
presidential one might be a real concern everywhere.

Margy

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 14:55:52 GMT, Jay Honeck wrote:
Yesterday, as we were once again flying blindly toward unknown weather, Mary
and I lamented the fact that we'll never have radar on board our Pathfinder.
Too expensive to contemplate. Ditto with the "live uplink" stuff that's
just coming on the market.

So, I thought, why not adapt a marine radar unit to aircraft use? Checking
around on-line, it looks like you can get a pretty basic marine radar set up
for less than $2000 -- a tiny percentage of what "aviation" radar would
cost.


I have always heard that a lightning detector such as StrikeFinder
or Stormscope works just as well as radar for thunderstorm avoidance,
and is more compact and less expensive than full-blown weather radar.
Eastern Avionics website lists several models for $3-6000 plus
install.


Ross Oliver

Radar reflects energy from something more or less solid...like a cloud full
of water. Sferics devices detect electrical discharges. They are two
different systems performing two different functions by measuring different
parameters. The ideal is to have both. If you have only one, you must
understand its limitations. A sferics device will not keep you from flying
into an ice-filled cloud, and radar will not detect clouds that do not
contain droplets of a certain diameter relative to wavelength.

Belt and suspenders.

Bob Gardner

"Ross Oliver" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 14:55:52 GMT, Jay Honeck
wrote:
Yesterday, as we were once again flying blindly toward unknown weather,
Mary
and I lamented the fact that we'll never have radar on board our
Pathfinder.
Too expensive to contemplate. Ditto with the "live uplink" stuff that's
just coming on the market.

So, I thought, why not adapt a marine radar unit to aircraft use?
Checking
around on-line, it looks like you can get a pretty basic marine radar set
up
for less than $2000 -- a tiny percentage of what "aviation" radar would
cost.


I have always heard that a lightning detector such as StrikeFinder
or Stormscope works just as well as radar for thunderstorm avoidance,
and is more compact and less expensive than full-blown weather radar.
Eastern Avionics website lists several models for $3-6000 plus
install.


Ross Oliver

If I had a plane anymore, and I had the bucks to put in radar or
lightning detector, the lightning detector would win hands down. It
will keep you out of the killer turbulence, whereas radar only keeps
you out of the wet stuff. IMHO of course! ;-)))

Warren (Hi Jav)

Robert Moore wrote:

(Ross Oliver) wrote
I have always heard that a lightning detector such as
StrikeFinder or Stormscope works just as well as radar for
thunderstorm avoidance,

You've heard way wrong.

Bob Moore
ATP B-727 B-707 L-188
FI ASE/IA
USN S-2F P-2V B-3B
PanAm (retired)

Warren & Nancy wrote
If I had a plane anymore, and I had the bucks to put in radar or
lightning detector, the lightning detector would win hands down.
It will keep you out of the killer turbulence, whereas radar
only keeps you out of the wet stuff. IMHO of course! ;-)))

In 45 years and over 20,000 hours of flying, every instance of
"killer turbulence" that I encountered WAS associated with the
"wet stuff". Most of those years were spent flying out of Florida
to the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone...thunderstorm alley. I
have always found that avoiding the wet stuff is the best plan of
action.

Bob Moore

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:Y7OZa.121718$uu5.17371@sccrnsc04...
So, I thought, why not adapt a marine radar unit to aircraft use?

Granted, I know very little about marine radar, but just given the
application, I'd suspect that it would not have characteristics suitable for
aviation. For one, all of the marine radar installations I've seen use a
rotating antenna, which would be hard to find a place to mount on a plane.
Beyond that, I don't know what the range of a cheap marine radar is, but
I'll bet it's significantly shorter than an aviation unit. Also, my
understanding is that marine radar is designed to optimize imaging of other
watercraft and coastlines, not weather.

Far be it from me to dissuade someone from trying. But I sure wouldn't hold
my breath waiting to see if they were successful.

I'd rather have both radar and lightning detection, but I agree that the
lightning detection gives you much more utility for the money.

Pete

Snowbird wrote:

I'd bank on CBAV + a sferics device over trying to make Marine
radar work for wx detection in a plane which is moving 10-15x
faster than a boat.

You obviously haven't been in Margy & Ron's plane recently... :-)

Russell "I can *row* faster!" Kent

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 17:09:41 -0700, pac plyer wrote:

(Ross Oliver) wrote
I have always heard that a lightning detector such as StrikeFinder or
Stormscope works just as well as radar for thunderstorm avoidance,

You've heard way wrong.

Bob Moore
ATP B-727 B-707 L-188
FI ASE/IA
USN S-2F P-2V B-3B
PanAm (retired)

Man you said it Bob. Twice out in the South Pacific with convective wx,
ops tried to get me to fly the trip without any radar. My response was
the same both times: If you can't fix it, just give us a call at the
hotel, cuz that's were we'll be until you break out the bucks to go buy
one from Singapore Airlines or somebody and fly it on over here. (some
of those Equatorial boomers go up to 70,000 ft) I'm just too ****ing
cute to die anymore.

pacplyer
ex-thunderstorm nafod

pacflyer - which aircraft do you have your StormScope or StrikeFinder time
on? Have you flown any GA radars?

I've flown both StormScopes and WX radar (I don't have any time on cheap
GA radar though), and one of my current aircraft actually has both. You
need to understand that the two technologies have different limitations.
Radar does a good job of finding water, and pretty much any thunderstorm
worth worrying about will be dumping lots of water. But, you need to
understand how to work the tilt knob, and you need to understand that just
because that glob of red looks pretty thin doesn't mean it is a good place
to try to punch through. If the water is coming down strong enough, it
will stop the radar from seeing anything further out in that direction. So
you may see a glob of red, with green and black on the other side, but it
is only green or black because the radar signal isn't punching through to
there.

The StormScope stuff, in theory, should keep you out of the really bad
stuff, as any CB should be producing lightening. It won't keep you out of
TCUs, but they shouldn't kill you, although they may scare the hell out of
you. I've seen quite a bit of variation in performance on different
StormScope installations. One aircraft I flew (TB-21) had a StormScope
installation that worked extremely well. The C550s that I fly with
StormScope seem to work much less well. I suspect the technology is very
sensitive to where the antenna is located, how well everything is
grounded, and how much electrical noise the aircraft produces. YMMV.

With weather radar, I suspect there is probably less installation to
installation difference in performance, for the same model unit and same
antenna. Obviously more expensive units with bigger antennae and more
power will work better than the cheaper GA stuff.

If I was spending my money, I'd take a StormScope over a cheap radar. But
I would do a lot of testing in VMC with CBs in the area to satisfy myself
that it was working properly before I went into clouds with it. If I was
spending my boss's money, I'd take an expensive radar over a StormScope.

--
Kevin Horton RV-8 (finishing kit)
Ottawa, Canada
http://go.phpwebhosting.com/~khorton/rv8/