In many
cases, yes you can fly under the radar because typical civilian radar is line
of sight, meaning that it has to have a straight unobstructed path to an object
in order to "see" it This is because it works by sending a radar
signal out and waiting for it to reflect off of something. If it reflects off
of another object, like the ground, a mountain, a building, a thunderstorm,
etc. then it won't see what is behind it.
Since the earth is round, flying "under" the radar is flying
beneath the coverage area that the radar can "see" directly from
where it is, and the height of radar coverage depends on the distance from the
site as well as the terrain.
An example
is here:
The top
half shows how the curvature of the earth affects it and the bottom half shows
how other objects can shadow radar (even though is is using aircraft radar, the
same principle applies).
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