We had a 'nodding horror at our helicopter base in the nineties at Shenzhen. It was probably a Chinese copy of a Russian copy of a American radar. It had an enormous valve somewhere in the cabinets which would take ages to warm up and we would watch a miniature lightening bolt working its way across a small dial until it crossed and then it was working.
The operator would swing it around until it was pointing along out departure track and the nodding bit would paint pictures of all the cus and cunimbs defining the base and the tops.
At the turn of the century is was scrapped and we just had Hong Kong weather on the internet which gave us a full radar picture of cloud for a sixty miles radius of Chep Lap Kok.