Despite the continuing rise in phased array radar research and development efforts for weather observations, numerous challenges still remain for large-scale deployment. One of the most important advantages of active phased arrays is graceful degradation, where the radar is still operational even if a small percentage of the transmit/receive (TR) modules fail. This is only possible with the use of individual, low-powered, solid-state transmitters at each element. With the goal of lowering overall cost, and given the constraints of current amplifier technology, it is desirable to use the lowest power possible for each individual TR module. However, lower transmit powers lead to the need for longer pulse lengths in order to achieve the desired sensitivity requirements. In order to also provide acceptable range resolution, pulse compression techniques have been used for decades with military radar systems, but are yet to be applied on a broad scale to weather radar. Preliminary observations and theory regarding pulse compression with weather radar are presented, as well as an introduction to the system being used for testing: the RApid-XPOL dual-polarized X-band rapid-scan radar (RaXpol) operated by the Atmospheric Radar Research Center at the University of Oklahoma.