Windshear radar calibration, 1992 flights: Transmitter power and receiver gain stability

During the 1992 NASA airborne Doppler windshear radar flights, radar calibrations were performed prior to each flight in order to determine transmitter power, receiver gain, and receiver noise power. The calibration results show that the average transmitter power in radar mode 6 was 186 watts, with a standard deviation of 7 watts. The average high power amplifier gain was 9.62 dB. At the wide IF bandwidth setting, the receiver gain was 123.1 dB, while at the narrow IF bandwidth setting, the gain was 121.8 dB. The receiver system noise as seen at the receiver input was -107.0 dBmw using the wide IF bandwidth and -107.9 dBmw using the narrow IF bandwidth. In radar mode 7, the receiver gain was the same as in mode 6. However, the receiver noise in mode 7 was about 2.5 dB less using the wide IF bandwidth and 2.0 dB less using the narrow IF bandwidth. The R/T unit flown in 1992 had also been flown the previous year when it produced comparable results. This technical memorandum was written as a follow-up to NASA TM-107589 (June 1992), which describes similar radar calibrations performed during the 1991 windshear radar flight experiments.