6 ms·

Radar would be quite a lot of RF radiation!

• jcims 8y ago
  I don’t know anything about the system in question but if it was mounted on a humvee it would have to be low power to avoid cooking people in the beam. Plus there will be so many reflections in an urban environment and the ranges are so short that you’d likely do better with a low power system. Maybe on the order of 5-25 watts. That said, sinking say 10W of heat into your organs overnight is going to do serious damage.
  • blattimwind 8y ago
    If you're literally sleeping on the radar antenna you're in the near field of the antenna. Meaning, the antenna doesn't work at all like it was designed and you can get "strange" couplings, e.g. very high power density in a few spots on the body, and almost no power coupled to other parts.
  • ac29 8y ago
    >That said, sinking say 10W of heat into your organs overnight is going to do serious damage. Is it? Electric heating pads and electric blankets are certainly a thing, and they're around 10W (the one I have says 50W).
    • jcims 8y ago
      I had a 5W CB radio a few years ago and bought one of those 'through the windshield' antennas. It basically operates by sticking two panels of tuned copper plates on each side of the glass and they just pass the RF energy between them. I made the mistake of trying to see if I could feel the 5 watts of RF energy coming from the radio side of the plate. I stuck the panel to my palm, keyed the mic, and instantly felt a searing, stabbing pain in my hand. It felt like a hot nail was jammed into the meat of my palm and was very surprisingly painful. As blattimwind said above, the distribution of RF energy in the body is going to be very unpredictable at that distance and you could have hot spots deep in the tissue that are not innervated. If you got a hot spot anywhere near what I experienced with that CB antenna I'm absolutely confident there would be tissue damage.