The next generation of airborne weather radars won’t just see the storms, they will remember what they have scanned and store that information in a computer database. By keeping a continuous record of radar returns ahead of the aircraft– culled from a series of quick “snapshots” taken at varying tilt angles and distances–the multiscan weather radars of tomorrow will greatly reduce workload and, for the first time, provide flight crews with three-dimensional views of storms and turbulence, according to radar makers.
Rockwell Collins and Honeywell recently introduced airborne weather radar systems that use the database storage and multiscanning techniques for the air-transport market, and both companies say versions for business aviation aren’t far off. The keys to the Collins and Honeywell radars are their abilities to scan and store weather information in their databases and to eliminate ground clutter–automatically and, their developers claim, extremely effectively.
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