Originally Posted by
Frank Grimes
Except -1 tilt doesn’t give you that, you have to take into consideration beam width. If your radar is a 3 degrees beam width (+/- 1.5), a -1 tilt would give you an effective tilt of +.5 and a look 4000ft ABOVE your flight path, vs your 8000ft below at 80nm. Also, you need to know if your aircraft radar is horizon stabilized vs aircraft axis stabilized.
Never thought I’d have to correct an Eagle driver on radar mech 😜
Beam width is the entire beam which means at 3* beam width and -1 tilt you're scanning from -2.5 to +0.5 already. The radar width is like a flashlight/cone of light. It's also important to know that the same energy at the -1* set tilt does not exist at the fringes of the beam.
The same math works for centering the beam, don't worry about beam width when crunching the numbers. Yes, you'll pick up above and below your target altitude but knowing where to center the beam is the most important aspect of using it.
Personal opinion only, I don't work for DL but was interested in this thread. I do not take my radar out of auto on the a/c equipped with it. We have some of NG's that have manual only where it is important to use tilt theory but on a/c equipped with auto, just leave it there IMO.
Originally Posted by
Tanker1497
Technique I picked up from NWA pilots that instructed on the plane when they first got it. Use Gain setting based on FL. I come out of CAL around 200. Max gain/max alt (39ish). Each click down is roughly 5,000 feet. One below Max/350. I do this to 3 below Max for approximately 250.
I cannot envision a reason to reduce gain except for one - you have absolutely zero options for penetrating a line of weather and it's all painting red+ everywhere, and you just want to know which of the red's are VIP 3's and which are 4's+.
Originally Posted by
dmhpilot
For those who like to hug storms…did you notice that there was a lightning bolt that measured more than 500 miles? Yes, it is an outlier, but lightning and hail can be projected well away from the storm. The 5, 10, 20 numbers in the FOM are bogus and have no grounding in reality.
Lightning strikes in the flight levels are of little concern IMO.