Radar Interference from Light Bars, etc.?

[seaveepete]

This is not my boat and also not even a Furuno dome in the picture below but I have a question about obstructions like this and what impact they have on radar performance.
The lightbar in the picture would appear to be directly in line with the Radar array inside the dome. I always think about radar as basically a searchlight. If something like the lightbar is directly in front of the radar transmitter it seems like it would not only deflect a lot of the transmitted radar energy but also interfere with the return signals as well.
Am I missing something? Is the wavelength of the radar pulse such that the lightbar doesn't affect it noticeably?
Bottom line - is the radar pictured here going to perform well for targets ahead of this boat?

 

[Johnny Electron]

It is never a good idea to place something in the radar beam that the radar energy can bounce off of; right back into the radar receiver. Older radars will normally get ghost reflections and poor performance. New digital radars will normally tune down and give poor performance when getting a lot of high energy reflections. There might not be enough metal in that example to be a problem but it will cause some blockage. The worst place for blockage is in the direction your moving. You can put stuff behind your radar and use sector blanking to prevent transmission reflections. You shouldn't sector blank out the front of the boat. I guess on this example, it depends on how bad the reflection and blockage is when he runs the radar. It isn't something I would recommend. They might put on a radar mount and raise it so it shoots over the light. This can be helpful if someone wants to use a wedge mount which helps on some smaller boats.