Well, I don't agree and in fact reverse the 'training captains advice'. It is vital, especially when you cannot 'see' the weather ie at night, to use 'TILT' to look down occasionally and see what is below and possibly active/building, especially as you approach weather. 'Auto Tilt' merely adjusts the scanner to eliminate ground returns and does NOT look down far enough for that. If your radar has 'AUTO SCAN' you are in with a chance - it 'builds' a picture of the vertical development of the cell by varying the scanner tilt automatically..
This is a good guide to how it all works
http://www.airbus.com/fileadmin/medi...V_WX-SEQ07.pdf
As far as gain is concerned, again the opposite - I used to go max gain around the 20k mark to get an 'early warning' of activity and then when that had been seen, go to calibrated to try and assess the severity, again trying to build a vertical picture of the cell.
Probably as well I never flew with any of your TCs
