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Octahedrals

The classic octahedral reflector is made of three planar circles or squares of metal intersecting at right angles, forming eight trihedral reflectors. In the usual "catch rain" position, one trihedral will face up and one down, and the remaining six are arrayed around a circle, three oriented 18° above the equator, and three 18° below. This optimizes the return from the "pockets", and avoids the nulls or gaps as best as is possible, but only at a 0° angle of heel.

Considerations of heel angle has led to the "double catch rain" position, with one planar surface oriented vertically along the vessel’s axis, and the other two planes ±45° from the vertical. This is not the ideal with no heel angle, but moves towards the "catch rain" position as the boat heels.

This polar diagram shows the RCS for an Octahedral type radar reflector when heeled at 15 degrees.  As you can see it never attains 10 m2 at any time, and has large areas that fall well below 2.5 m2 and down to virtually nil.
This provides a very poor response and places your safety at risk!
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