Thanks, EKlawyer, for sharing your scare. It is relevant.
Quote:
"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". "
Tree confessed: "Don't knock it till you try it! Based upon my experience and experimentation with the 767 radar, that is the best for painting "dry" ITC buildups. MAP and one notch down from MAX GAIN. This procedure was developed by a group with many decades of ITC experience and in the past also used expensive NV goggles as another layer of detection. NV goggles are now cheap enough in HK that one can afford to do their own research."
Dunno whether you guys are flying Collins or Bendix/AlliedSignal/Honeywell, but I can tell you this about Collins WXR:
Rainfall scintillates, which is detected by doppler shift. Ground return doesn't of course, so the Collins radar distinguishes the two, and optimizes the mode selected. There will be a "GCS, Ground Clutter Suppression", IDNT, (ground clutter) Ident, or some other such submode of WX on the control panel. This is especially effective at low altitudes where there is high terrain. This submode will wipe out the gentle rainfall along with the terrain returns, but you don't care about that, anyhow.
If you want to see the high altitude ice crystals after you have picked your route by scanning the wet part of the storm, it's a good idea to have variable gain in WX mode, or use the Turb mode. The Collins WXR operates at full gain in Turb mode, so it will display returns below the level of light rainfall, just like Max gain in WX mode.
Do AF pilots get good WX training?