Radar painting revisited
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A couple months ago I posted about concerns regarding the weather radar depiction. I finally had some time to quantify the expectation vs simulator.
for context I've simulated the beam of the radar in desmos: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/usvsrea3fa
So here is the situation at hand, True altitude is 5000 feet (ISA STD SL). There is precipiatation and the radar is manipulated from +14° to -14° with GCS off and On. Cloud Tops are 18000feet and bases are 1500 feet. With the exception of a slight shader intensity change there is no difference in the presented image:GCS OFF
+14°

-14°

GCS ON
+14°

-14°

Here is why this is significant:
- At -14° Tilt and 5000 feet the radar should only paint distances between +2.61nm and +4.4nm
- At that location and heading, the only visible returns have a maximum elevation of +2100ft for Santa Catalina. But GCS is doing something very strange

- At +14° and 50nm the lower lobe is at 61,000feet and the upper lobe is almost 101,000 feet

So there is nothing to paint at those ranges - With the clouds set as they are (assuming precip all the way to the top of the cloud) then a tilt of -0.5° would be the maximum tilt to paint something at 20,000 feet and 50 miles
@Black-Square do you have any insight into what is going on here?