real life radar use

I leared in my military service (AAM) that it is not a good idea for your health to stand in front of an emitting radar. How about that in the aviation business. Are there any special roules how to use the radar in your aircraft's nose e.g. when on the ground, flying close formations, head to head situations? Or is the aircraft's structure protection enough so that there is no danger for you when being painted by others radar?

At least in comercial aviation, minimum distance is 10 m for meteo-radars.

On the other hand, is normal procedure not to use radar unless close to take off, eg. lined up on runway or about to.

As mentioned, the danger, while very real, is limited to relatively short distances.

Radar use from a safety point of view does not affect formation spacing or alignment, although it's a good idea to put the set into standby during air-to-air refueling!

Andy,

Do you suppose fingertip is the primary cause there were so many ‘Bald’ eagle drivers in the USAF?

How have you been, I haven’t heard much from you recently!

Hey Vince

Not too much time for sim games when I'm spending as much time as I am with the real thing...the ERJ-170 instructor job has kept me pretty busy. We're just about to get our first sim here in St Louis with the second coming in this fall...that should cut down on the TDY considerably!

Indeed in civil avio it is the duty of the Captain to switch off the radar on the ground excpet during take-off. I suppose it is pretty similar for military.

Ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation. The first gives you cancer while the second heats your coffee - possibly even after you drank it! With the wavelengths and power of typical radar sets, I wouldn't expect there to be really be much risk to personnel for short-duration exposure...although you couldn't pay me to stand in front of an active radar for any length of time, either! It makes sense to be cautious around equipment that has high energy potentials, and I certainly wouldn't recommend sticking your head in a radar's feed horn, but I would be skeptical of someone who claimed to have serious health issues from these types of systems.

Also, http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q315.html
and http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercause...sure-and-cancer

ECM equipment can be more dangerous (generally more power output) than radar, but even then not immediately harmful in small doses. I know an EWO that radiated a couple of crew chiefs at extremely close range (multiple steps/procedures skipped in that instance); AFAIK, no one has showed any negative effects to date. The weather radar carried on most civilian plans is realistically probably not that dangerous after one short exposure, and only lethal with repeated, prolonged exposure (wouldn't necessarily want to press to test on that, though).

Not sure how it works for fighters, but for Bombers/Civil/other heavies aircraft, most don't spin up the radar till clear of the "populated" area on the taxiway/runway, and if they do, it is only visually ascertaining there are no people or sensitice equipment off the nose of the aircraft.

Radar operation (along with ECM and other systems) is inhibited from operation on the ground by a safety feature known as a Weight On Wheels (WOW) switch. It is required that these systems be placed in STBY mode until airborne in case of a WOW failure. IIRC, the F-15 has a minimum safe distance in excess of 300 feet while operating the radar on the ground (by using a WOW override interface).

if its not a Boeing, Iam not going!

Replying to an eleven years old post on the forum..... Now, that's an accomplishment . But I guess the pro-Boeing sentiment was just too strong to resist .

When Poland builds an aircraft as good as most Boeings, ill thumbs up your post have a nice day