Couple things: number one, you shouldn't have. Two, the energy isn't collimated coming out of the feed horn, but it sure as hell is going through a 6x12 in wave guide. Three, if you touch something, it's not an RF burn anymore, you just touched a hot thing. Four, there do have to be precautions in place when you're using radar around munitions, but microwaves don't heat up metal very much in most cases, so it's less of a concern than for either walking bags of water and lopids, or micro scale electronics, which are definitely affected. If microwave radiation is as harmless as a declawed kitten, then why is there so much attention paid to radiation safety when working around radars? If none of that is thought-provoking, then I'm curious why you feel that the same microwaves that can turn pizza cheese into magma in your kitchen, are harmless when they're multiplied by 100,000 coming out of an antenna.

[–] teft@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If none of that is thought-provoking, then I’m curious why you feel that the same microwaves that can turn pizza cheese into magma in your kitchen, are harmless when they’re multiplied by 100,000 coming out of an antenna.

Because I understand that the frequency in my microwave is 2.4ghz and the one in the radar i used was ~8ghz and the radar you described was 900mhz. Modern radar doesn't heat things the same way that old school ones did.

If the power is what's causing the problem then sidelobe radiation would cook everyone on the ship since it's around 50% the power and extends around the radiation source 360 degrees. Also the power is only about 10 times the power of a microwave on average.

edit: a word