[simpits-tech] Anyone know about real weather radar?

[Matt Bailey]

This is probably going to be some obscure information to get, but I am
wondering if anyone on the list here has any technical knowledge of
what signals drive the displays on real weather radars. I got the great
idea to hack up a real Bendix radar unit last year, stuck an LCD in it
and wrote an OpenGL program that displays X-Plane's weather radar info.
That was cool, but now I am wondering if it's possible to use a real,
unmodified radar display and just feed it the data it's looking for to
make it draw simulated weather.

As it happens, my Sabreliner has a real radar unit (the same model as
the one I hacked for my old sim, as it happens). It's a Bendix RDR-1200
system. From what I have gathered, the system consists of the display,
a computer, and the dish (which I do not have). I'm reasonably sure
I can get power to the display unit once I get a pinout diagram for the
rear connections, but I have no idea how to send data to it. I *think*
the unit itself is monochrome, which should make things simpler.

Matt