Sea-Me, look BIG out there
The Sea-Me active radar reflector has been around for a few years, though it’s not well known in the States. I was just reminded of it by an article in the British publication Yachting Monthly, which recently tested just about every radar reflector available, both in a lab and on the water. The Sea-Me blew the others away. By amplifying and sending back the X-band radar signals that hit it, this gizmo can make a small yacht look like a big ship. Which is exactly how I’d like to look in the Dover Straits or right outside Camden on a foggy day like this. I once wrote a column discussing this concept, along with how radar reflectors are tested and the Sea-Me. The scary truth is that most radar reflectors on the market are not very effective. The fairly large and expensive passive ones that did well in Yachting Monthly’s testing were the Echomax EM230 and standard size Tri-Lens.
Is Sea-Me FCC approved? It seems to be the most visible RTE (radar target enhancer) in the publicity sense, but as far as I can tell, all the users are in Europe. After reading about RCS (radar cross section) of passive radar reflectors, Sea-Me looks very good. I've only seen four disadvantages: you can't use your own radar at the same time, it may not work with non-pulse radars, it does not work with S-band radars, and it doesn't work without power. The comment about non-pulse radars is here:
http://www.echomax.co.uk/competing-products.htm
This site lists six active RTEs
http://www.theradarreflectorsite.org/RTE.htm
and three of those are no longer available.
There is one more for the list: Phalconet.
One of the ones listed as not-available, Activ'Echo, is a French unit which according to rumour was taken off the market because the big ships were complaining that there were too many little boats looking like big boats. But that may not be the real reason. That unit put out sweeps of the whole radar band whenever it detected a radar, as opposed to Sea-Me which just amplifies and resends the same signal it receives.
The Jotron Tron ARR also works by transmitting a sweep of the whole band.