Radar reflectors

[uforea]

Watched all the Clipper Yachts leave Hull Marina yesterday and a colourful sight it was. I did notice that they all had the cylindrical type of radar reflector halfway up the backstay, this is the one which the recent report said was no good, but my thoughts were ,if it's good enough for these guys it's got to be good enough for me.
I seem to remember from RKJ's recent round the world trip that he had one or two close encounters with ships and if that was because he also had one of these reflectors on Saga Insurance??
Ted.

 

[roly_voya]

I would belive the lab report - THEY DON'T WORK - If you suspect they don't work and you are wrong so what but if you suspect they do work and you are wrong... the clipper yachts also have a very sophisticated electronics/nav systems and may also be using something like a class B AIS transponder and/or cont' radar watch s well

 

[tangofour]

[ QUOTE ]
if it's good enough for these guys it's got to be good enough for me

[/ QUOTE ]

Lots of people still smoke so it must be OK, please light up in an effort to speed the removal of your DNA from the gene pool !

 

[maxi]

Dream on ! Just look at the construction of the cheap tubular products, and even the most basic grasp of physics will tell you that they can't work - unless of course they are carefully set-up in an acohic chamber to an absolute vertical position. At sea, is this sustainanble - no.

 

[Hoolie]

Sure they work - they're just ineffective. There's no way a small passive cylinder could present the same radar cross section as a battle tank. They're possibly better than nothing, but that's about it.

 

[Evadne]

If it's the 2" or 3" diameter christmas tree decorations you're talking about, they don't enhance your radar signature to any significant extent. A gert big octahedral works, we have an 18" collapsable one but it's a pain to hoist in any wind so I fitted one of the white cylindrical ones up the mast. The yacht mags' tests have said it is the best of the passive ones, apart from the refractive one with three balls, which is too heavy, but the Qinetiq post-'Ouzo' report said none of the passive ones work, apart from the £10000 buoy marker. I am hoping that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

 

[Twister_Ken]

Aren't the clipper yots steel?

Or maybe I'm confusing them with Chay Blyth's ex-fleet.

 

[billcowan]

I think all big charter/racing/commercial boats have to have a passive reflector to meet insurance/DOT/racing rules.

They are all useless anyway, so they fit the lightest least windage type.

A bit like the 'fire proof' bulkeads on the 1960s Lotus race cars, - a 3" square of asbestos.

 

[Marsupial]

The tubular reflector is too small to be seen by X band radar, the yacht is too small to be seen by S band so if you want to be "mostly" invisible to radar fit a tubular reflector!

 

[Oldhand]

The Clipper boat's masts will be a better reflector than a cheapo French cylinder radar reflector, but then the masts are quite big.

 

[Drascomber]

Does kitchen aluminium foil work? Is that what the RAF chucked out strips of to fool enemy radar?
If it works, then surely a whacking great lightweight folding or inflatable reflector whith foil stuck on it would be the answer - or if it was big enough to work would it be so big that it would screw up sailing performance?

 

[Hoolie]

It's true the RAF used foil but in long strips so that as it fell it twisted and turned and reflected radar signals from no matter what angle. Your plan to use a board will undoubtedly reflect the radar signals but probabaly not back to the transmitter. "Corner" reflectors echo the signal back along the angle of incidence and are probably as good a passive device you put on a boat.