Re: Is there any way to cure a truther?
Could radar track the plane that low?
psik
Wow, just wow.
Yes, RADAR can track objects entirely down to ground level. But there are a lot of factors that come into play here. But as a general rule of thumb, as long as a RADAR has a clear line of sight between it and the object, it can track it. It may even be able to track it if there is no clear line of sight, but I am not going to even begin to get into that subject at this time.
And yes, I do know a thing or two about RADAR.
Sorry try this link
As to Radar and altitude it depends how far the plane is from the Radar antenna and upon geography
Of all of the factors, geography is the most important. This is because of ground scatter and ghosting, which can jumble the RADAR return.
In most cases, this return is rejected by the computers that operate it. Essentially they have filters that have been tuned in to these false returns (like say from a mountain or building), and ignore them when presenting a picture to the operator.
However, the data is still placed in the digital memory of the RADAR logs and can be retrieved and then viewed at a later time.
Most people really do not understand how RADAR actually works at the user level. These can see things as small as birds, or even vehicles traveling on a nearby highway. It is up to the signal processor to discriminate which is a real target (an airplane traveling at 120 mph), and a false object (as far as the operator is concerned), like a flock of birds traveling at 30 mph at 100 feet, or a truck on a nearby highway traveling at 60 mpg at an apparent altitude of 4 feet.
These discriminators are put in place to prevent the operator from being overwhelmed by spurious data that they do not need to process. For ATC, they only care about actual aircraft. For another system like Air Warning, they track all objects at all speeds. For Missile and Air Defense, they care about aircraft above a set altitude and traveling at a certain speed.
RADAR is pretty good, and can see a lot more then most people think. We can even see our own "Stealth" aircraft on them, but 99% of the time do not get anough of a signal return to accurately track or engage them (think of a hazy shadow that comes in and out, not the bright solid blip that is needed to target a missile on it).
And yes Psi, now you are moving into something I can give you a lot of very specific details about.
