Marine Radar in a plane?

What band are these GA weather radars on? C or X band? Sounds like
people's biggest complaint is the antenna gain (in elevation rather
than azimuth). So when you're flying at the altitudes that a regular
piston power GA plane flys at you mainly see ground clutter when you
try to look way out.

Of course the other angle is you data link the picture from a nice big
ground based weather radar payed for and maintained by tax dollars.

(pac plyer) wrote in message . com...
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

"Jay" wrote in message m...
What band are these GA weather radars on? C or X band?

X band.

Having flown through a lot of clouds with frequent lightning but minimal
radar returns and gotten a smooth ride, I disagree with your friends thesis.
Fifty thousand tons of water didn't get 40,000' in the air without a lot of
convection.


Mike
MU-2


"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.



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.

Anyone tried this in a home-built plane? What's the range of those
units?
Installation?

I don't have the luxuary of either radar or stormscope.
But I do have the "poor mans" stormscope, the old trusty ADF.
Always points where the lightning is.

Nick
PA28-180 'D'


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.

Anyone tried this in a home-built plane? What's the range of those units?
Installation?