Are there consumer radar systems?

[Brian Now]

I just had a stupid thought. Is there such as thing as a consumer radar system? I mean some kind of small radar device a person could buy and aim at the sky as they would a satellite dish?

This might have been mentioned here before, I don't know. But I thought it would be interesting if someone could do that in an active UFO area. Apparently, at least some UFOs have been know to show up on radar.

Maybe radar systems that are powerful enough to reach a couple of miles into the sky are still too large and expensive for consumer use. I have also heard that birds that get close enough to a live radar can get fried.

 

[Tommy Allison]

Actually, if you go to some of these army surplus places, you can buy them. There's a place in St. Paul Minnesota called Axman that routinely gets stuff like that in. You would have to get a dish or some kind of beam emitter, but yeah you can get the stuff. I think there is a problem however with using it legally.

 

[dorkbot]

Passive radar is the future.

It's already in reach of the ambitious hobbyist unlike high power active radar which is rather impractical, expensive and probably illegal to run unlicensed. As Davenport's paper suggests, passive radar may very well be vastly superior to active radar for detecting something as elusive as physical ufos.

 

[Rick Deckard]

I have a strong suspicion that you would not be allowed to operate 'civilian' radar systems - for all sorts of reasons - especially in light of the 'terrorist' threat.

Any technology that might compromise the day-to-day running of a nations defense activities is gonna be kept out of the public domain. I suspect radar systems are in that technology group.