Q400
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 200; Flight Crew Total 15000; Flight Crew Type 10000
Communication Breakdown; Situational Awareness; Workload; Distraction; Fatigue; Human-Machine Interface
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation - Altitude Overshoot; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance; Inflight Event / Encounter Weather / Turbulence
Flight Crew Became Reoriented; Flight Crew Overcame Equipment Problem; Flight Crew Returned To Clearance
Human Factors; Aircraft; Weather
The very weak and notoriously unreliable weather radar in our Q400 frequently fails to turn on. Our Manager of flight standards prohibits us from writing this up. He has a reset policy that has us turn the radar off; (after it first takes a half minute to find it has failed); wait 45 seconds; then turn it on. By the time it goes through its warm-up cycle the airplane may have traveled 10 miles.ATC vectored us into an embedded cumulus cell; telling us there was an area of heavy precipitation at our 12 o'clock. When the Q400 radar was available it showed us only four miles from a level three cell. Radio congestion delayed our clearance for a left turn. It was necessary to revert to level one automation to increase our turn rate. During this high workload activity FO set the altitude alerter to 14;000. Climbing through about 10;900 ATC queried our altitude assignment. FO thought it was 14;000; Center said it was 10;000 and cleared us to 11;000.CA was flying. It was a 12 hour day following an FAR 117 minimum rest.
Q400 Captain reported an altitude deviation that stemmed from a high workload situation in bad weather.