Whether it’s a wing-mounted pod or the nose cone on a twin, radomes take a beating. They smash bugs, collect ice and bear the abuse of prop-slinging stones on rough pavement. Inevitably, the radome will need to be reworked—a worthy investment if you want to squeeze every bit of performance from a radar, old or new. There’s also aesthetics—a beat-up radome is a sore thumb on a new paint job. Radomes are eyeglasses for the radar, critical for accurately transmitting the beam and receiving the returns.
“The radome is essentially a lens that you’re putting on top of the radar, and if it’s compromised you might lose transmit power, and get less signal coming back in. That means an underrepresented weather picture,” Garmin’s Joel Andrews told us. He’s seen plenty of issues where worn radomes have seriously compromised the performance of the radar. The other issue with a neglected radome is distortion of the radar beam. While the radar is designed to place most of the energy straight ahead, there are certain amounts of energy by nature of the pulse that get pointed down. With a worn radome, the radar can act like a radar altimeter and display unusual amounts of ground clutter.