Furuno Radome Damage

[125Miles]

Disaster..... The tree brunch felt and damaged radar system. The plastic dome cover is completely knocked off. It seems that only further damage is spinning antenna shield. I am not sure if aluminum bracket that connects gear shaft to antenna itself is bent as well but it looks like antenna is facing up little bit. Anyway, despite all the damage radar works just fine picking up all the targets on my backyard, so I am hoping to be lucky to get away with hammer and pliers fix. The radar is 16 miles Furuno 1622.
I was thinking may be someone has a similar unit laying around and can check if the spinning antenna array should look a little bit skyward or its aligned 90 degrees to the dome base?

[Charlie]

I had my 1831 apart and I would say it is bent. As far as I remember the spining antenna was at right angles.

[fairbank56]

Absolutely should not be bent. Iv'e seen the inside of a lot of radar domes and they have all been perpendicular as I recall. Here's a Furuno 1834 that I have in my shop at the moment.

Eric

[r.furborough]

Are you going to trust your radar after the antenna has been distorted? Any distortion, however minor in the rotating antenna is going to give you false readings on your display. There may be angular and distance errors even on near targets, these errors will be even greater on more distant targets.

[fairbank56]

You don't show us the front of the antenna but if the pcb and it's elements are still good (no cracks in the pcb or it's circuit traces) and the board is not warped/bent, you should be ok. You may cause damage if you try to bring the whole thing back to its proper angle. You could compensate by just shimming up the back of the scanner a little bit with spacers. The two shields above and below the pcb array should be at the same angle which should be the same angle as listed in the specs for the radar beam. They help shield any electronics directly above/below the scanner. Small Raymarine radars don't even have these shields.

Eric

[125Miles]

Thank you folks big time! I was hoping that this aluminum cover is just interference shield of some kind. The pcb array is all good. I ll try to straighten up the antenna shield and align the bracket back to 90 degrees. Thank you so much!