Weird Harold wrote:GlynnStewart wrote:I'm guessing said potato doesn't look like much of anything. Maybe fine ash.
More like a rapidly expanding cloud of hot starch.
Mmmmm....Pop Taters!
Saber94 is right - military radars can't see anything closer than a couple hundred meters. You need a specialized narrow-pulse radar for that. A radar has a high-power transmitter and an extremely sensitive receiver connected to the same antenna -- and thus to each other. There has to be a T/R mechanism to protect the receiver from the transmitter, either by disconnecting the receiver or by shorting across its input. Either way, the receiver can't receive during this time. Even if it could, it would be "blinded" by the transmit pulse which is millions to quadrillions of times more powerful than the signals it's looking for.
Any radar with an Effective Average Power of over 100 watts is dangerous, and anything over 500 watts is deadly. Peak power can be tens of megawatts for a few microseconds.
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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!