View Full Version : primus 440 weather radar on helos.
To primus 440 digital weather radar, do you find this equipment reliable ? very often significant convective clouds are not shown on weather mode, intermittent functionning is not rare. Many of the other available functions are not very usefull to helicopter operations. I have the feeling it doesn't do its basic job correctly , detect convedtive clouds (precipitations) and good reliable mapping mode for ARA approaches.
I think the older versions of Bendix 1400 were much better, even in its monochrome version.
charron
12th Jan 2007, 19:31
The 440 works fine, maybe you have an antenna problem. It is more reliable than the 700/701 series, but it doesn't have the ground mapping function and didn't work out that well for flying an ARA approach. Anybody using the series for offshore upgrades them to a 660.
The old Bendix 1400 was pretty good, but it is getting harder to keep them working, and they occupy a big old box on the panel. Once I saw a color TV I never wanted BW again, same with a GPS, same with a Radar. Have you looked at the Garmin GWX-68 offering?
Charron
Thanks charron,but it's actually the 700/701 model we have on board, not the 440 (my mistake ) . It's fitted on 4 of our 76s, it was working well when new, but now we reguraly have to change the Receiver / Transmitter.
We reach the point were we find ourselves AOG, because spares are so long to reach us (our MLE forbids offshore fllight with inop weather radar)
There is no particular error message and the test pattern is correct.
Symptoms are usually nothing shown on the screen even with obviously reportable weather. Sometimes, it works well for about 10 mins time with good returns and then,suddenly nothing. (A bit as if a component was overheating...)
Just for general information, we have had an answer from the manufacturer: the magnetron lifetime stands somewhere between 800 or 900 hrs (around 1 year of operation for us )
Good for them they are not manufacturing microwave hovens, nobody would buy such a thing....but I guess competition is tough amongst microwve hoven manufacturers !
Definitely an old bendix 1400 is of a much better use for this task.