Active reflections
I’ve never been a great believer in
radar reflectors. My opinions were vindicated a couple of years ago
when the
MAIB inquiry into the Ouzo collision found that not one of the passive
reflectors
they tested was able to meet the 20 year-old ISO 8729 performance
standard.
Now, the company behind
one of those
passive reflectors has come up with an active radar target enhancer – a
competitor, at last, to the popular “See-Me” that has had the market to
itself
for most of the past ten years.
Like See-Me, the new Echomax Active
X-band radar reflector is a slim plastic tube, weighing less than half
a kilo, that
transmits an instant pulse of microwave energy whenever it receives a
pulse
from another vessel’s radar.
At 478mm long and with
a diameter of 41mm, the
Active-X is slightly longer and slimmer than its rival, and at 327g
it’s
slightly lighter. With retail prices around the £500 mark, it’s
also slightly
more expensive, but its 1-watt transmitter is 60% more powerful, so it
should
produce an even clearer echo on a ship’s radar – an expectation that
Echomax
say is supported by tests carried out by the same lab that carried out
the MAIB
tests that show it to be roughly three times better than See-Me and
between ten
and twenty times better than the best of the passive reflectors.
There is, however, a snag. Neither See
Me nor Active-X will respond to the S-band radars – the kind that
ships’
watchkeepers are most likely to be concentrating on in heavy rain or
rough seas.