Lonewolf50;
Re "automated" radar...let me dream off-topic a moment. I am thinking about the usual moisture-driven images but married with real-time satellite returns which provide pilot-selectable three-dimensional images and which place one's aircraft in-situ, in-scale, real-time, with the weather one is navigating a path through/around. Such radar would find shear conditions and provide sufficient filtering for crew awareness without overloading them with possibly-available data but which somewhat-to-largely irrelevant to safe flight around the kind of weather seen here. The quality of the data must be extremely high [reliable] but presented graphically and simply so quick decision making about pathways that are, say, ten miles ahead, (just over one minute of flight) and within the turn-rate capability of between 1 & 2 deg/sec. Such capability avoids the threats-to-flight of signal attenuation, (blocking of returns by closer build-ups).
As with RVSM and lower RNP capabilities and such technology's effects upon altitude availablity in increasingly density-challenged airspace, such technologies might tempt tighter fine-tuning of clearances when negotiating giant squall lines, but all this is dreamland stuff. But is "To Filter or Not to Filter", automation's question? I much prefer manual control so I am more aware of the basis upon which the radar returns I am viewing are created. As many others who do this work here have attested, switching between manual and auto gain, tilting the antenna to "survey" heights of returns and simply being aware of the nature of returns, provides more than adequate information to see, anticipate and where necesssary, navigate such weather.
At night, just looking out the window, hand on the heading knob, with permission to deviate, (using CPDLC!..brilliant technology), and watching the radar while observing/memorizing the "pattern of buildups" during (distant) lightning flashes or by moonlight, can be as effective a deviation technique.
In my experience, far too many crews did not know how to use radar and did not even understand what the returns really meant. Rather than spending money on automating the radar-return process, a better bang-for-buck is teaching crews how to use radar correctly but that's tactical approach and doesn't add to business's bottom line or share price.
Last edited by PJ2; 16th May 2011 at 17:36.