FAA "Centers" have primary radar?

I would like thank everybody for all of the information. I have made
changes to my book to reflect Centers in general have skin paint capability.
There must be something unique about Washington Center's radar out over the
Atlantic Ocean Warning Areas that prevented them from getting a skin paint
on my friend's F-4.

The short summary of my friend's fatal flight is: he lost all electrical
power and decided to rejoin on another F-4 in the warning area. The lights
he picked out were not an F-4, but an airliner out over the ocean headed to
Miami (we were off the coast of North Carolina). By the time they realized
their mistake, they didn't have enough fuel to get back to land and ended up
bailing out in the ocean. 6 days later a fishing trawler picked up the back
seater and the front seater was never found. Without a skin paint, the
search and rescue forces looked in the wrong place.

More details in my book you can get for free from my web site. Feel free to
download and email to your friends.

--
Danny Deger

NASA offered me $15,000 to take down my web site. Take a look and see why.
www.dannydeger.net

On Aug 6, 11:34 am, "Danny Deger" wrote:
I would like thank everybody for all of the information. I have made
changes to my book to reflect Centers in general have skin paint capability.
There must be something unique about Washington Center's radar out over the
Atlantic Ocean Warning Areas that prevented them from getting a skin paint
on my friend's F-4.

The short summary of my friend's fatal flight is: he lost all electrical
power and decided to rejoin on another F-4 in the warning area. The lights
he picked out were not an F-4, but an airliner out over the ocean headed to
Miami (we were off the coast of North Carolina). By the time they realized
their mistake, they didn't have enough fuel to get back to land and ended up
bailing out in the ocean. 6 days later a fishing trawler picked up the back
seater and the front seater was never found. Without a skin paint, the
search and rescue forces looked in the wrong place.

More details in my book you can get for free from my web site. Feel free to
download and email to your friends.

--
Danny Deger

NASA offered me $15,000 to take down my web site. Take a look and see why.www.dannydeger.net

Danny

I would add this "thing" ...it might not be all that unique. it just
might be "how it is"...for all centers.

The SSR range for a "radar" is (because of the active particpant) must
longer then skin paint. I dont know what year it was, but the
"computer" system probably rejected the target in part because of some
"angle" issues (ie two systems were painting it and it fell out of a
"cell" ie both radars present information to the computer and the
computer gets confused because it cannot corelate teh target(s) and
just drops the target).

On 9/11 when the airlines went "primary" it was only some really
quick thinking by the folks at NY center that held them as targets.

The sad thing (different topic) is that more or less the FAA worked
"as advertised" on 9/11. They were about the only one.

Robert

In rec.aviation.piloting Danny Deger wrote:
I would like thank everybody for all of the information. I have made
changes to my book to reflect Centers in general have skin paint capability.
There must be something unique about Washington Center's radar out over the
Atlantic Ocean Warning Areas that prevented them from getting a skin paint
on my friend's F-4.

Or the F-4 was too small to paint, or the radar was broken that day, or
lots of other things could have been in play.

Having spent more hours than I care to remember behind military air
defense radar systems, I can say with some authority that a single
fighter is tough for any radar to see at long ranges.

--
Jim Pennino

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jimp wrote

Having spent more hours than I care to remember behind military air
defense radar systems, I can say with some authority that a single
fighter is tough for any radar to see at long ranges.

Yeah, and I even heard that they now make fighters nearly impossible to see
on primary radar, ON PURPOSE ! ! ! g
--
Jim in NC

Danny Deger wrote:
I would like thank everybody for all of the information. I have made
changes to my book to reflect Centers in general have skin paint
capability. There must be something unique about Washington Center's
radar out over the Atlantic Ocean Warning Areas that prevented them from
getting a skin paint on my friend's F-4.

There is one other aspect of primary radar that does not seem to have
been discussed: Most, if not all, airspace surveillance radars use a
"Moving Target Indicator" system to filter out the returns from fixed
terrain and structures. In essence this is a very narrow notch filter
centered at the radar's transmit frequency. Only returns that are
doppler-shifted a detectable amount from the transmit frequency are
painted on the display. This makes it difficult to detect turbojet
aircraft that are moving tangentially to the radar site. Rotating
propellers, on the other hand, usually produce a nice
frequency-broadened return and are usually easy to detect.

- Bill Frensley

On Aug 6, 1:52 pm, "William R. Frensley"
wrote:
Danny Deger wrote:
I would like thank everybody for all of the information. I have made
changes to my book to reflect Centers in general have skin paint
capability. There must be something unique about Washington Center's
radar out over the Atlantic Ocean Warning Areas that prevented them from
getting a skin paint on my friend's F-4.

There is one other aspect of primary radar that does not seem to have
been discussed: Most, if not all, airspace surveillance radars use a
"Moving Target Indicator" system to filter out the returns from fixed
terrain and structures. In essence this is a very narrow notch filter
centered at the radar's transmit frequency. Only returns that are
doppler-shifted a detectable amount from the transmit frequency are
painted on the display. This makes it difficult to detect turbojet
aircraft that are moving tangentially to the radar site. Rotating
propellers, on the other hand, usually produce a nice
frequency-broadened return and are usually easy to detect.

- Bill Frensley

Excellent point...I was trying desperatly to stay out of MTI!...

Most of the MTI's I am aware of occur in the baseband data
processing...but I suspect that the APRS 4 has a notch filter...or
did.

Robert

On Aug 6, 9:34 am, "Danny Deger" wrote:
I would like thank everybody for all of the information. I have made
changes to my book to reflect Centers in general have skin paint capability.
There must be something unique about Washington Center's radar out over the
Atlantic Ocean Warning Areas that prevented them from getting a skin paint
on my friend's F-4.

The short summary of my friend's fatal flight is: he lost all electrical
power and decided to rejoin on another F-4 in the warning area. The lights
he picked out were not an F-4, but an airliner out over the ocean headed to
Miami (we were off the coast of North Carolina). By the time they realized
their mistake, they didn't have enough fuel to get back to land and ended up
bailing out in the ocean. 6 days later a fishing trawler picked up the back
seater and the front seater was never found. Without a skin paint, the
search and rescue forces looked in the wrong place.

More details in my book you can get for free from my web site. Feel free to
download and email to your friends.

--
Danny Deger

NASA offered me $15,000 to take down my web site. Take a look and see why.www.dannydeger.net

F-4. Is this some old event? That certainly changes the discussion.
At least mode-s is out of the question.

wrote in message
oups.com...
On Aug 6, 9:34 am, "Danny Deger" wrote:
snip

F-4. Is this some old event? That certainly changes the discussion.
At least mode-s is out of the question.


It happened in about 1983. You can read up on the details in my book you
can download for free.

Danny Deger
www.dannydeger.net

Danny Deger wrote:

In another thread I am in a discussion on radar capability for FAA
"Centers". My recollection is that they typically have no primary radar,
thus no capability to paint weather.

There is no connection whatever between 'primary radar' and 'weather radar'.

The ability to detect storm clouds is related purely to the wavelength of the
radar transmission. A radar that was swamped by cloud returns would be utterly
useless as a primary radar !

Graham

In rec.aviation.piloting Eeyore wrote:


Danny Deger wrote:

In another thread I am in a discussion on radar capability for FAA
"Centers". My recollection is that they typically have no primary radar,
thus no capability to paint weather.

There is no connection whatever between 'primary radar' and 'weather radar'.

The ability to detect storm clouds is related purely to the wavelength of the
radar transmission. A radar that was swamped by cloud returns would be utterly
useless as a primary radar !

Bzzzt, wrong answer.

The ablility of radar to detect weather is related to frequency, antenna
polarization, antenna sweep rate, type (as in pure pulse versus doppler)
and signal processing (if any).

Most search radar used for finding airplanes won't see ordinary clouds
at all and are generally marginal for seeing precipitation unless you've
put something in the design to do both.



--
Jim Pennino

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