CAMAGÜEY- Since 1986 there is a weather radar in Casablanca. After several modernization processes, the engineers in the National Radar Center (CNR, Spanish acronym) located in this city, will gift the Cuban capital with the version Doppler RD-100S, first serial production of the prototype of Cuban radar, functioning here since 2009.
According to Dr. Orlando Lázaro Rodríguez González, director of the center, “in 2001 all the operation pieces that were likely to break easily were removed and it was automated using the program VESTAR-RDA although back then it could not be controlled remotely because until 2006, the Meteorology Institute did not have a national network”.
In 2018 the team headed by Leonardo Lino Fernández Suárez, Roberto Alfredo Naranjo Ponce and Arturo Alejandro Peña Hernández started the first phase of the process of converting the actual MRL-5M to Doppler (with the ability to measure rains and winds) with the conditioning of the wiring.
“The receptor and the software for the processing of signals were upgraded to VESTAR-CICLOPE, that is for Doppler system, and the control software was changed to VESTAR-RCP, as a product of a technological transference from the British that we adapted to our needs” assured Rodríguez González.
In the following days, the assembling of a new transmitter, designed in the CNR, will take place which will make Casablanaca the first radar to be product of the technological solutions perfected since 2012 when Orlando Rodríguez and his engineers made true the request of the Commander in Chief of developing a weather radar for Cuban weather conditions, dream came true with the Camagüeyan RD-200SX, where every technical solution was tested for Doppler, Polarimetric, and Double wave radars (hardware and software).
“The only thing left will be the antenna of the old radar, everything else will be the solutions developed here that have been tested in the eight functioning radars. This allows not only a greater technological independence, but also has made us experts in mocking the blockade. Many times, the automatics that we used was restricted when it came to spare parts, but now the industrial components that we use allow more open solutions, the same as the software”.
With this new version of Casablanca functioning, there will be two Cuban radars with Doppler condition watching our skies, a project that does not stop, since “now we are in the phase of massive reproduction of this prototype by commission of the direction of the country”.
- Translated by Elianna Díaz Mendieta