eklawyer;
Threw the pillock occupying my seat out and initiated the weather avoidance. Followed by a few home truths once clear.
I was horrified what might of happened if I had come back 15 mins later than I did.
Flying into horrendous wx is not beyond the imagination especially at night !
That's pretty worrisome stuff, eh? Don't know about yours, but my airline never once, in 35 years, told us/taught us how to use radar. As a result, I have watched the same kind of lack of understanding about how to set calibration, how to use tilt, how to calculate height, what the beam width is, what does and what doesn't return signal, signal attenutation and shadowing, the use of range and so on.
A friend on the 767 informs me that his F/O actually argued with him (flying in the same general area as AF recently) that the "best" radar for thunderstorm penetration was "MAP". Needless to say he got the same lesson you probably gave. There are as many theories on how to use the gain as there are pilots.
The use of 330/340 radar was only recently placed in the AOM but it never, ever comes up in sim rides, enroute check rides, annual recurrent training or even informal discussions. Not good enough.