Newbie learning to use a weather radar

Here’s some weather and radar picture I shot last week. We avoided Learjet-style :-)

As for tilt adjustment, I was anxious about it in the beginning. Now I simply tilt until some terrain displays and then a degree or two up.

That video of the DA42 going into Frankfurt is a bit scary, he was definitely in get-there-itis mode. Interesting to see some controllers comment on Youtube to correct his phraseology and video notes. But the tilt was really the bad part, he was flying blind and was lucky.

I agree with Loco, at least in the cruise, it’s actually not very complicated, and if you have vertical profile view it’s very easy to see what’s ground (symmetrical returns) or weather (asymmetrical vertical bulge upward). On departure I start at +15 and remove 1 degree per 2k feet, roughly, until I get to about +5. In the descent and in the approach environment, I’m still not very comfortable. I’ve tried setting +10 to make sure I don’t underscan, but I still find myself going to vertical profile very often to confirm.

The reality is once you’ve seen enough of them, you don’t mistake a cell for ground returns (or the opposite as he does on the video), but you still need to be careful that your beam doesn’t miss the liquid precipitation – which means, as Achim sometimes points out, you should aim your beam to an altitude comfortably below the -15 degrees C level.

To go back to iz-trips’ question, here’s a cheat sheet for 10" antennas which I find very clear and useful

Radar_Pod_Usage_Guide_pdf