GROUP TEST
Active or passive?
Which refl ector
works best?
The two Radar Target Enhancers (RTE) currently available
are said to be the ultimate ‘active’ radar refl ector – but, our
technical expert James Turner asks, how do they stack up
against more traditional ‘passive’ refl ectors?
T
he test team decided early on to radar expert and co-author of the technical good science. The single variable is the
make this a very practical test. Read content of this article (see p59). refl ector. The mounting position, the
the manufacturers’ brochures and It could well be that any of the radar weather and the craft are the same for all
technical documentation and you’ll see refl ectors tested here might work better (or the products. Even the aspect of the target
why. They tend to focus on laboratory worse) on a different boat, mounted in a yacht was kept constant, always being
tests and evaluations. What we wanted to different way, or in different weather viewed from astern.
see was how they worked out on the water conditions. Each of the companies that
on a particular day, rigged on a typical submitted refl ectors for testing was told in What you need to know
cruising yacht and viewed on a good some detail about the how the tests would Radar Cross Section (RCS) is a theoretical
quality radar. Our ‘target’ boat was be conducted, that they were going to be measure of how detectable an object is by
Dorothy Lee (ST145), a Halberg-Rassy an on-the-water, practical ‘snapshot’ view. radar. When radar waves are beamed at a
352 owned by Duncan Wells, a regular What we have aimed for is simple, but target, only a certain proportion are
contributor to Sailing Today. Our radar- refl ected back. A number of different
equipped ‘tracking’ boat was the Nelson factors determine how much
42, Trinity Star, owned by Alan Watson, a electromagnetic energy
returns to the source,
such as the angles
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TIVE-X • ECHOMAX • TRI-LENS • FIRD
ST149 Grp Radar Reflect_RTG.indd44 44 16/7/09 14:13:55
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