The National Weather Radar Testbed (NWRT) is now functioning as a research tool in Norman, Oklahoma. The NWRT was developed as a result of a partnership between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Severe Storms Laboratory, the United States Navy's Office of Naval Research, Lockheed Martin Corporation, the University of Oklahoma's Electrical and Computing Engineering Department and School of Meteorology, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, the Tri-Agencies' (Department of Commerce, Defense and Transportation) Radar Operations Center, the Federal Aviation Administration's Technical Center and Basic Commerce and Industries, Inc.. Using a Navy SPY-1A phased array antenna system, the NWRT provides the first phased array radar available on a full-time basis to the meteorological research community and for testing of the concept of a multifunction phased array radar system.

Again, only a few data sets were collected during the 2006 storm season due to the limited amount of severe weather. Current efforts are concentrated on improving the scanning speed through beam-multiplexing and over-sampling. We have also implemented remote operations in preparation of our move to the National Weather Center. In this paper, we will describe the present status, research progress including eight second volume scans, and plans on making the NWRT a national resource.