A complete collaboration between pilots, weather researchers and engineers.

"Working together with the specialists has convinced me they really understand what is happening out there, and are able to translate this into an automated system."
- KLM Engineering Pilot

Recognizing the need for a simpler system that reduced pilot workload and training costs, Rockwell Collins engineers decided to change weather radar operation from an experience-based skill to a technologically-based capability. The goal was to offer flight crews hands-free operation, with the exception of range selection. The resulting system was called MultiScan - named after the multiple radar scans the system performs to detect weather out to 320 nautical miles of the aircraft.

This technology provided a new method for detecting and displaying weather information with several new features such as OverFlight™ Protection - all virtually free of ground clutter.

From its inception, MultiScan incorporated input from several international airlines, developing many new technologies that gained wide industry acceptance. Yet, principle systems engineers Dan Woodell and Roy Robertson continued their development quest, ultimately working to take MultiScan to a whole new level of weather radar accuracy.

An Unexpected Breakthrough

Shortly after MultiScan's commercial launch on a Boeing 747, the engineers learned that in certain geographical areas the radar was not performing as expected. The team began an initial geographic weather correlation project and implemented this functionality by 2003. As they continued to evolve the MultiScan technology, Woodell and Robertson discovered the groundbreaking work of Dr. Edward Zipser, a researcher and meteorologist at the University of Utah. Dr. Zipser has more than 38 years of experience studying weather, of which the last nine years have been spent working almost exclusively with NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite.

Dr. Zipser's research revealed that there were dramatic differences in regional weather patterns across the globe that required multiple weather detection solutions. For example, Zipser found that the vertical reflectivity profile of weather over land masses is dramatically different than that over the oceans.

"When we read Dr. Zipser's research," recalls Woodell, "We realized that thunderstorms at cruise altitude over the Pacific Ocean near the equator, versus thunderstorms at cruise altitude over the United States, might have less radar returns by 200 to 1. That's a dramatic difference."

This discovery enabled Woodell and Robertson to reach their ultimate goal - to aid pilots' weather avoidance decisions by providing the complete information about the weather situation.

A Global Storm Chase

Although the MultiScan engineers had been using data collected via commercial aircraft to evolve the geographical weather correlation algorithm, "We reached a point where we realized using our customers' airplanes simply wasn't good enough," says Robertson. In order to continue to provide the best airborne weather radar system to our customers, Rockwell Collins started working on a plan to lease a long-range air transport category aircraft for a long-term weather data gathering and validation flight program slated for 2007. The goal of these flights was to gather critical weather data and to validate the performance of the MultiScan radar in different geographic regions. For more information, see Test Flights.

Automatically adjusting the weather detection parameters based on regional storm models ensures that MultiScan detects a broad range of weather and associated hazards regardless of geographical location.

By depicting not only the weather's position, but also its associated hazards, MultiScan allows pilots to make better, more informed, diversion decisions, improving safety, comfort and efficiency. With MultiScan Hazard Detection System, pilots can now traverse the globe with confidence knowing that they have the most comprehensive airborne weather information available.