Radar range

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Riverbed

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Dec 2, 2005
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No, not your old microwave oven - your navigation tool. To what range do you normally set your radar when just cruising in good night conditions (non-congested areas while travelling barely on plane)? How about at night, hull speed in congested areas? I know there's no specific answer because of all the variables - but just generally.
Thanks -
Riverbed
 
Usually I keep it at a mile, max - like to know what's near me
 
Onboard the Coast Guard bouy tender I was on that operated in the CHesapeake Bay area and outside from OCean City MD to Oregon Inlet NC we stayed on 3 mile range while in the rivers and 6 or 12 when in the bay or ocean.
 
it really depends on the conditions, usually 3 to 6 miles to get the big picture and see what traffic may be coming my way. but if needed, i will bring it down to 1 mile or 1/2 mile.

for instenace, couple of weeks ago i left great kills NY in 1/4 mile vis., I had the radar set at 1/4 mile or 1/2 mile to get max details on the dozens of small boats fishing in the bay. Once i got closer to the main channel I increased range to focus on ship traffic.
 
I never let it "just sit on one range", actually. But for a "longer run" 3 or 6 miles if I was using it primarily for navigation, 3 or 1.5 mi, if I was using it for "traffic watch".

In more enclosed areas, or when nearing a "target", it was set to what ever encompassed both terrain features and close in traffic, usually 1 or 1.5 mi.

Keep in mind that for most recreational boaters, scanner height limits your range to about a 6 mi radius or less ( for targets on the water surface ). In many cases this height related limit is 4 nm or less... ( roughly: square root of scanner height above surface , in feet, times about 1.2 = horizon in nm )
 
when inshore anything more than ½ mi is too much to resolve anything. A couple of miles when offshore is common and as far as it will go for range finding on storms etc. I could easily get buy with 5mi max. IMO the ability to discriminate among small targets is more important than max range.
 
Mine was a 4kw w/ a "48nm range". What that meant in practice was very nice resolution at typical ranges, and I could track storms. Max usable "traffic watch" was about 6 nm radius.
 
Inland on rivers and canals, I use .25 miles. I can pick up pelicans and pilings very well, and I am
usually running at a slow speed at night.
If I am in a big lake, usually around .5 miles and offshore, 3 miles.
I run around in a small express. From where my radar is located on the hard top, I probably cannot
pick up more than 4 miles or so. It would do me no good to set it any farther.
I have a small dome type radar, it will not pick up as good as the open array radars.
 
As Bill said, if I'm on a boat with only one radar screen, I tend to move it in and out as needed.
 
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