Weather radar in EBBR still having issues !

[Yoyoman]

Hello Luchtzak members,

June 29th I posted a message in this forum about Brussels airport (EBBR) and its weather radar and I got over 600 readings but not one single answer to my question.

In real time I was following the radar images of a severe thunderstorm approaching Zaventem. But exactly when this thunderstorm was located above Zaventem the radar stopped to send images and disappeared from the screen. Has the radar been hit by a thunderstrike ? I have uploaded this video animation towards You Tube "just in case" it would be fine to show you those images but I have strong doubts that it would be legal to allow any access to such images at You Tube (copyright etc). For this reason the video at You Tube is in "privacy mode".

So why am I posting again ?

Because some weeks ago I thought that the EBBR weather radar was back to normal and I updated that in my previous post here at Luchtzak in "Civil aviation". However something in the radar image seemed strange to me : It's layout. And it's only today (analyzing carefully what you can see) that I understand why the radar image looks strange : the EBBR weather radar is still having issues. It's the weather radar in Saint-Hubert which is broadcasting and that you are able to see now at the Belgocontrol website.

I told André (SN) about my previous post that has never been answered. He replied that "Skystef" should be able to answer : He works a the control tower in EBBR.

I assume that just like me nobody among you knows what happened (Otherwise you would have told me) but many among you must be curious just like me and André.

A little remark : Perhaps any moderator could delete my previous post about the EBBR radar ?
==> This newly posted topic about the EBBR radar contains all the info required and is more accurate than previous message that seems obsolete now.

Unfortunately the St-Hubert weather radar is broadcasting lots of rain right now. Nevertheless, have a great day

Bruno

[tolipanebas]

Not that I want to spoil the fun of your research here, but don't you think that if the WX radar of EBBR really would be u/s, it should be written in a NOTAM?

Yet until now, I haven't seen any such NOTAM and thus very likely there's nothing wrong with the WX radar at EBBR, hence nobody working there knowing what you're talking about.

FWIW, just because a public website isn't linking to a certain source any more, doesn't mean the source is u/s, it could for instance just mean there's a copyright issue preventing the free public distribution of the information, or there might be a technical problem linking a public website to the still operative source amongst many many other reasons.

[FlySN]

Found this on Belgocontrol website:

Meteo radar data temporarily unavailable

No radar images are available because our radar is having technical problems as a result of a lightning strike on June, 28th. Unfortunately, this problem may persist for a couple of weeks. We are trying our utmost to solve the issue as soon as possible and will, in the mean time, be publishing alternate images from the KMI/IRM-radar situated in Libramont. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this might cause.

Cheers!

[tolipanebas]

Found this on Belgocontrol website:

Meteo radar data temporarily unavailable

No radar images are available because our radar is having technical problems as a result of a lightning strike on June, 28th. Unfortunately, this problem may persist for a couple of weeks. We are trying our utmost to solve the issue as soon as possible and will, in the mean time, be publishing alternate images from the KMI/IRM-radar situated in Libramont. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this might cause.

Cheers!

And there you have it! A simple check with the source of information solves this long quest in a minute!

Since it is not repeated in any official NOTAM for EBBR, it clearly is not really such a big issue in real operations, probably because of redundancy, redundancy which isn't always available on websites: case closed???

[Yoyoman]

@Tolipanebas

Sir,

I mostly appreciate your answer because that's exactly what I was looking for ;o)

Let me just clarify to you that I don't want to trigger any fun with my post here at Luchtzak : I'm just a curious person who is very interested in aviation. And furthermore, I did anticipate that my topic may be a silly and irrelevant question. Your answer seems to do in that direction.

Last week I asked SN26567 (André) who is a popular member here at Luchtzak what he thinks about my question and his answer was that it's not a stupid question. He was curious himself !

Assuming that indeed the weather Radar never got any technical problem because of that thunderstorm and what you say makes perfectly sense (!) it keeps surprising me that exactly when that thunderstorm crossed Zaventem the internet images were broken and this never happens ! It's a very big coincidence. Taking into account what you say I'd rather look for something else such as the fact that the system enabling the images to appear on the internet has been hit by this thunderstorm.

I don't want to "pollute" Luchtzak's great forum with posts that are a waste of space and interesting info.
If my forum topic would be considered this way, I'd invite the moderators to remove this topic and my other topic as well. I've perhaps spent some of my time to write all this but what does that mean compared to a lifetime !

Thanks for your answer !

[sn26567]

No need to remove this thread. I am sure that several readers might be interested in the question and the answers. Thanks to all who contributed.

[tolipanebas]

Why would this thread have to be removed? A question was asked, and it got a fair answer within a couple of hours... I'd say it is a very good thread actually, although the title is a bit overdramatic maybe.

BTW, if I don't forget it, next time I'll have a look in our crew room to see if we can get a live radar picture of EBBR there, so we can hopefully conclude whether it's just the link between a certain WX radar at BRU and the internet, or whether there is more about this after all. ...

[Yoyoman]

@ Tolipanebas : The title has become "less dramatic" now and for sure it is closer from reality ;o)

Bruno