There are many different ways to determine what the weather is going to be like on your chosen flying day, or what you can expect weatherwise enroute. I am developing a new free aviation weather service, and am interested to see what backcountrypilot.org members use.

You may use several of the above products, but with this software we can only choose one as a poll answer, so choose the one you cannot live without.

Let me know if I have missed any.

I tried DUATS for a while but I just can't deal with 50 pages of weather 1000 miles away from my route. I'd rather hear "VFR not recommened" over and over. The Weather Channel and the rest are no good because they have no ceiling or visibilty and you can't even hope for a tops report or PIREP. I have a weather rock, which is by far the most acurate but you can't file with it. In Mexico and CA they have "Looksee" method which works pretty well:!:

If I'm going to fly local I look out the window. If I'm flying from Florida to Vermont, I watch the weather channel, then call flight service and like was said before hear "VFR flight not recomended"

Tim

One of the reasons for the forthcoming FSS overhaul (by Lockheed Martin) is just for that reason: Why be inundated with pages of area forecasts and AIRMETS/SIGMETS for the Midwest when I am going to do a local flight in California? Annoys me. The FAA technology is still rooted in the 70's, which sometimes i can appreciate, but too much information is worse than not enough in my opinion. METARS for example, are extremely shorthanded information, and useless to anyone but a pilot or weather briefer, but you have to admit they get the point across with minimal data. Kinda cool.

The look out the window method here in the Reno area can be hit and miss. I've seen beautiful days where the winds aloft are deceptively high, out of the west over the mountains, and once you take off, you get some nice mountain wave rotor action to remind you what lap belts are for.

I see that WS-DOT Aviation Division is in the (long) process of installing "airport cams" at various locations. They put one in at Skykomish a year or so ago, pointed up toward Stevens Pass. Others at Harvey Field, Blaine, not too sure where else.
One was just installed at Port Townsend last fall, aimed toward our local weather rock (aka "Crybaby Hill"), which is about 8 miles SW of the field. This airport cam business is just a hi-tech version of the weather rock idea. Better than nothing, but IMHO it's not worth the money the state (otherwise known as US!) is spending on it. How many worthy projects are denied funding cuz the money's being spent on fluff?
At least if the camera location has an AWOS, they put the data from that on the cam image.
Speaking of METARs and such, I wish the FAA & weather service folks would just use plain english. I lost my Little Orphan Annie decoder ring a while back,and I have a hell of a time deciphering that mumbo-jumbo. It doesn't take much more text to just use plain language. We're all online now-- the old telegraph & iron horse days are over, so
leave the secret code crap for the stock market ticker tapes.

Eric

I use the DUATS Cirrus software to get my legal preflight weather brief and supplement it with info from ADDS. Mixing the two gives very comprehensive weather info. The DUATS/Cirrus weather brief gives a lot of info, but you learn to sift through it to find just what you need for the given flight. If you want a plain language brief, just select it in the briefing dialog box. I've even used and had success filing flight plans with the Cirrus software - I hardly ever talk to a briefer anymore. I find that I can interpret the raw weather data better than most briefers anyways. I've been a total weather junkie since I started flying sailplanes back in the early eighties.

Another useful tool for anyone who is an EAA member is the free basic http://www.aeroplanner.com membership that comes along with the EAA membership. Along with a great flight planning tool are a lot of useful weather tools and a TFR map, which is very helpful in the post 9/11 era. Aeroplanner and Sport Aviation magazine are worth the price of EAA membership alone.

AOPA also has a Flight Planner to download and use. It has a weather overlay and some neat uses for the trip to rubberband around the TFR's.
John

John,

Thanks for reminding me about the overlay feature. I have tried the AOPA Flight Planner a few times in the past, and really wasn't that impressed. It has the look and functionality of an application that is young in the development life. But this overlay feature is pretty cool. We have some weather moving in today, so I overlayed the Nexrad maps onto a sampled route from Reno up to Chester, CA. It's actually pretty cool:



I wish it was Java though, or at least ported for multiple platforms so I could run it on Linux or OS X.

-Zane

I prefer DTC's DUAT service over the GTE/CSC duat. Have used it since 1999, seams very usable for me. www.duat.com

Aeroplanner.com

Was playing around on aeroplanner.com and saw that you can pull up digitized sectionals from anywhere. Kinda neat.

http://map.aeroplanner.com/mapping/char ... -123.38799

I downloaded the free DUATS Golden Eagle program by FlightPrep. This is the product that is meant to replace Cirrus. I am pretty impressed. It needs some polishing, but te output is really nice. It has wx map overlay lke the new AOPA flight planner, and generates a nice printable "trip kit" of flight plan, navlog, and charts. Requires a current DUATS login. Kind of a big download though at 100MB.



Z

I also use aeroplanner.com I pay for the premium service about 10 bucks a month, and really like it.