I get the picture

We were supposed to take a trip today but we had some things that needed checking and by the time we figured out the issue and got everything right yesterday, we had cancelled the flight.  That meant this morning I had time to go fly.

When I woke up I noticed that line of storms that passed through was still rather active to our South.  This was another great opportunity to work on my radar skills.  The past trips I had large weather systems but the storms near me were not strong, just some light rain and I was never able to get much convective activity in the location I wanted which was 25-80 miles away.  Today was different.

I headed down to Daytona area at 5500 and passing Saint Augustine checked in on 118.85 with approach.  I let him know I would be maneuvering North of DAB and he said to let him know as I maneuvered.  Approach was great and let me get all my practice in while keeping an eye on me.  Range and Tilt are the main controls with the radar.  As described in earlier posts, the radar reflects not just rain but also the ground.  The picture above is at +4.5 degrees and there is little ground clutter.

At 4 degrees, pictured above, I start seeing the coast and all the tall buildings.  At 3.5 degrees, pictured below, the ground is even more prominent.

This is what it looks like on XM Nexrad (pictured below).  Notice that the radar colors do not exactly align and their are differences in the displayed rain.  The rear right cell looks more uniform on the XM composite while it has distinct parts on the live shot.  This could be because they were shot at different times (Nexrad is delayed) or because the live is just looking at the slice directly ahead and there could be more rain above my beam.

It's an interesting but not a very important distinction as I would be avoiding the area regardless.  Both pictures have the steep color gradient which is a warning to give the storm plenty of room.

I also spent some time trying to figure out the best configuration to display all the data I have.   Above I have put the map back on the 750 and have the radar on the PFD.  I can actually run the radar on both screens with different setting but then the scans are divided between the screens so the updates are half the rate.  One really cool feature is the ability to display the active radar on the moving map.   

I really like this presentation as it is easy to visualize the weather in relation to the course.  The downside is that you don't have the radar controls but in most cases, once the tilt is set you don't need to mess with it very often.  I did some additional runs with smaller cells off to the side to see how it would perform.  There are some cells ahead to the right.  Visually they did not look like they were tall.  Also notice on the XM there is rain directly ahead which was not there in flight. That light green was just moisture in the atmosphere and often the XM or FIS-B are so sensitive that green by itself can basically be ignored

If I had been solid IMC, the active radar would have done a good job keeping me clear of the cells.  One other thing I wanted to try was how good the stabilization would be in a turn.  Many radars end up painting the ground on the inside of the turn as the dish does not remove all the bank.  The GWX70 did its job well and was clean in all turns.

Overall a great learning experience.  I will need more training but I think this summer will present ample opportunities to paint weather over Florida.