Kevin, Based on my limited experience on the other side of this issue (I spent a week driving a 38' radar equipped fishing boat in Puget Sound and the Straight) ... I had the joy of piloting the boat into the Straight (while the owner downed a bottle of vodka) with fog so thick you could not see 25 yards. Kayaks and canoes are 100% invisible. Rocks and other things sticking out of the water less than 2 ft. are barely visible on radar, and may become invisible as the boat approaches them. Sailboats are totally visible, with or without radar reflectors. The masts and cables give a great reflection. I was able to steer around a sailboat in the Straight using the radar and I can tell you honestly that without it we would have collided, absolutely without question. Radar reflectors on small motorboats seemed to make no difference I could notice. There are lots of small sparkles on the screen (from waves, etc.) and making a small intermittent reflection is useless. One time I saw a boat appear and disappear on radar while in perfect visual sight the whole time. My belief was that the radar was picking up the broad side of a 5 gallon gas can on his deck when he was at just the right angle. I suspect reflective coating on your paddle would have this same effect ... being bright for a moment, then disappearing. >From my limited technical knowledge of the subject, anything metal with a variety of 3-dimensional right angle corners pointing in all directions makes a decent reflector but it has to have decent size and it has to be up high enough to be seen by the radar antenna on the boat, which is generally up around 8 or 10 feet minimum. A crunched up beer can or ball of foil atop a bicycle flag or fishing pole might be effective, in my view. By the way, most radar users are absolutely untrained. My training was, "turn that breaker on before you turn the set on. There, OK." I think from conversations with other boaters that this is about average. And I think the bottle of vodka was about average too, and the fact that one sober person was on board all week was the exceptional part. You have to license a bicycle here, but to drive a 38 foot twin engine behemoth, or a 65 knot jetski, nothing. jerry. K. Whilden wrote: >I know this has been probably discussed before, so a quick summary would >be great. Exactly how visible are kayakers to radar? I am guessing that >kayakers without any kind of radar-refelcting special equipment are >completely invisible to even the best coast guard or land based radar. >Does this change appreciably with a head or deck mounted radar reflector? >Thanks, >kevin > ------------------------------- > | Kevin Whilden | > | kwhilden_at_seanet.com | > | Kayak Academy Instructor | > | http://www.halcyon.com/kayak | > ------------------------------- > >*************************************************************************** >PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List >Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net >Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net >Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ >*************************************************************************** > *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Oct 05 1999 - 11:53:07 PDT
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