Empirical Earth · Radio & Long-Distance Signals

Over-the-horizon radar — built to beat the curve

The claim

“Radar tracks targets thousands of km away, so there is no curve in the way.”

What is true

Radar is line-of-sight, and ordinary radar is limited by the horizon exactly as described.

What is measured

Conventional radar is blocked by the curve within tens of km; over-the-horizon radar exists only to bounce HF off the ionosphere and reach 1,000–3,000 km past that horizon, a technology built to defeat a curvature a flat Earth would not have.

What would show this is wrong

a conventional line-of-sight radar tracking low targets thousands of km away with no ionospheric bounce, making over-the-horizon radar pointless.

Sources

  1. Over-the-horizon (OTH) radar. Conventional line-of-sight radar is limited by the radar horizon set by Earth’s curvature; OTH-B skywave radar refracts HF (3–30 MHz) off the ionosphere to dete link
  2. Over-the-horizon radar skip zone. Skywave over-the-horizon radar refracts HF signals off the ionosphere to detect targets at roughly 1,000–3,000 km, but cannot see closer targets: the beam o link
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