I agree with Hudson, Max manual gain can be very usefull particularly for embedded CBs when flying IMC or at night.
My technique (learned when a copilot by a flightdeck visitor who worked for the radar manufacturer) is to select say 100nm range, max man gain and tilt down until you get a solid semi circle of ground return, bring this ground return to around 50nm and then look on the 50nm scale - anything there will be a storm return. Then tilt up and see how high it goes, if its still there at 2 degrees down then if I can't see it out the window I avoid it by the sort of margins discussed above.
slamer - surely if it's considered nescessary deviating up to 40nm then if it all still looks bad it's worth going another 40 miles rather than "batonning down the hatches" I was held down coming across Italy with cbs everywhere a few years ago eventually we rerouted via Sardinia and France and ended up about 100nm west of our original track, the guy behind us who didn't reroute ended up with a hail dented nosecone. Why take chances?
Last edited by Hobo; 29th Oct 2003 at 01:24.