A few additions:
I use my radar more than most because I find myself traveling at night more than I should or in bad vsby.
Being a weatherman, I was also familiar with analog weather radar and my analog Raymarine works pretty much the same, but without an azimuth adjustment.
Having said all that, I find a few things of critical importance to using and understanding your radar:
1. When I start the engine and turn on the nav lights, radio, etc, the radar gets turned on. It's critically important that you understand what various returns look like in good visibility, so that if you need to use your radar when you can't see, you know what it's telling you. A separate display is a necessity. In the beginning I thought a combined display would be good, but I quickly understood that too much information on one screen will block critical things at critical moments.
2. Related to that, I always correlate returns I see on the radar with what is on the chart or out the window. Always. That's the only way to make sure your adjustments are correct for the conditions. When I have new crew mates at the helm, that is an exercise I have them do continually.
3. To that end, I never use the "auto" settings. They are invariably wrong and worse, usually with "auto" the sensitivity (gain and filter) is too low, meaning there are less returns, but you don't know what it isn't showing you.
Lastly, I do the above, because there are times, usually at night, when my brain is saying one thing, but my radar and chart plotter are saying something else. I must know to ignore my senses and trust the radar.
