Tis the Season- Spring Weather Arrives.

Most of my time in Northeast lately has been  planning mostly around ice conditions, now, warm front inversions bring the clear ice to the lower altitudes, with the temps now in the plus 2 to 4 deg on the surface, we are able to use the TAT to land with a clean machine, using the ice profile for speeds. 
Yesterday the Radar was. showing returns as we flew from KSFM to KOWD after a lobster roll and chowder at Shane's. Tilt was at plus 10 and we were at 3000 ft for about 20 mins. This was a GWX 8000 Radar. Auto mode just showed us flying thru a blob of weather. As we went to manual mode, always my favorite, even in the Boeing ,we put the Bearing line over the heaviest part of the weather, and then did a Vertical Cut, it showed it was weather, no greater tool on board for the 10 inch antenna to discern ground from weather. We reselected horizontal scan and slid the gain bar to the bottom. That removed all the moderate and light rain from the screen. Fabulous!! A small amount of green remained and as we flew through it you could see the correlation of the rain hitting the windshield to confirm the measurement. Amazing piece of equipment for increasing confidence.
All Radars, RDR from Honeywell, GWX 68 from Garmin, and the fancy no magnetron 
​GWX 70's and up all operate the exact same way tactically, which is within the 40 nm scale, the 70'S and up can see further and require a different technique outside the 40 nm range to reduce ground returns.
Once you have your Radar calibrated, it is fantastic, 
As you practice the 5 step techniques, do it VFR tilting down to create weather returns just to get the flow smooth with your controls.
Best day and keep the blue side up!
Capt"n Bill