Weather info source

[rudymantel]

Guys, what is your favorite weather information source ?
I use Trade-A-Plane Weather because they provide the information in a very user-friendly format- plain English reports and forecasts for the entire USA, animated radar and satellite images and readable synoptic charts. None of the cryptic undecipherable gobbledy-gook as in DUATS.
It's made for my simple mind. However, it costs some $9 per month.

I'd be glad to hear from you all (or y'all)
Rudy

[CraigH]

Some of my favorites:

http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/fin ... aham%2C+tx

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/forecasts/ ... ity=Graham

And for graphical forecast, this one is hard to beat:

http://usairnet.com/cgi-bin/launch/code ... t+Forecast

[rudymantel]

Craig, thanks- that last one is really nice ! No ads, no cost, very graphical-what more could you ask for ?
Rudy

[Bruce Fenstermacher]

Rudy
At work we have Meteorlogics and WSI subscriptions. I can access the WSI from home as well. I generally use either of these sources for overall weather and to get the weather numbers.

But when I have to make a really dicey decision whether to fly or not I look at the local news doppler radar. Being in the Philadelphia suburbs our tri-state area is covered by 3 locally owned doppler radars. It is a shame and waste that we have 3 of these over lapping each other and so many places in the country have none.

In any case I have found the local doppler radar to be the most accurate because the local weather guys have tuned it to near perfection. There is so much competition between the stations they can't afford to have their radar showing it raining on a viewers street when it's not.

[alaskan99669]

Thanks Craig! That third link is awesome. I had my doubts if it would work or be accurate in Alaska, but it works great!

The National Weather Service has an excellent "Alaska Aviation Weather Unit" web site: http://aawu.arh.noaa.gov/ That's where I get most of my info. But what's really cool is if you want to "see", in real time, what the weather is like on the other side of that mountain range or through that pass by going to the FAA's weather cam site: http://akweathercams.faa.gov/

[briancbaker]

I find that if I just need a quick METAR or TAF that the NWS Aviation Service site is very convenient. You can get just about any content you want (even translated TAFs or METARs, though I find it faster to read the raw data) and its all provided free of charge. This is the type of service that some of those "pay for" sites are trying to get the government to stop providing by the way.

http://adds.aviationweather.gov/

You can even link directly to one or more location TAFs and add it to your favorites or create a shortcut. Below is an example I use often when I fly traffic watch.

http://adds.aviationweather.gov/metars/ ... hk_tafs=on

[rudymantel]

Brian, thank you- another excellent weather site-
Thanks very much guys- I'll start using these sites and when I get used to them, cancel Trade-A-Plane weather. It's a nice resource but these are as good, and at no cost-. All the info of course comes from the government, it's all in how it's presented.
rudy

[Kyle Wolfe]

I use DUATS a lot. Sign up for any pilot is free. And it's got a pretty good cross country planner.

http://www.duats.com/duats.cgi

NOAA has a good one at http://www.noaa.gov/

AOPA has a pretty good one too if you're a member.

Enflight is another one someone gave me, though I don't use it much. It has airport info as well as instrument approach plates too. http://www.enflight.com

Now, my question for you guys. I need to buy a new cell phone. Who has a service that provides real time radar? What's it cost? Are you satisfied? I'd love to be able to flip open my phone and bring up the weather.

[GAHorn]

You know, it'd be one thing if commercial weather sites gathered ALL their wx info from only commercial sites and produced their product relying only upon their mutual resources. But that's not what they do.
What they do is,...they use taxpayer resources (existing gov't weather sources) to assimilate the information....then they lobby congress to make the resource available to taxpayers only thru commercial sources. It's called privatization. It's a way for corportations to skim off a portion of the taxpayer's contribution as profits, and "outsource" jobs. We need to stay alert to such schemes and fight it every chance we get. I completely disagree with AOPA's endorsement of allowing Lockheed to take over FSS's and use taxpayer money to reduce the workforce. The wait for service will ultimately lengthen in order for them to "maximise" profits,... good experienced wx-men will lose their jobs, and the taxpayer will get less for his money so Lockheed can get between the taxpayer and his dollar.
Failure to have prevented this will ultimately lead us all down the road to: User Fees. It's the next step. Once traditonal wx sources are taken away, the only way to comply with the regulations which require pilots to familiarize themselves with "all available" information....will be to pay Lockheed to give us the wx information we've already paid for!

[rudymantel]

The reason AOPA endorsed the plan to let Lockheed to operate FSS's is that it will theoretically save money and thus forstall the dreaded user fees. It probably will do neither. George is right - we're letting the camel of privatization get it's nose in the tent...
Rudy

[GAHorn]

I believe the reason AOPA endorsed the plan is because Phil Boyer and the staff at AOPA knew they couldn't stop the administration from doing this deal and didn't want to be exposed as being powerless to stop it. They didn't want the loss of prestige that would entail because it would be the beginning of the end for AOPA.
The guys who put this deal together for Lockheed early in the game included an expensive penalty for us if the deal didn't go thru for any reason.
When the deal was finally scrutinized and found to not be the perfect deal after all, it's supporters brought up the "expensive windfall for Lockheed" penalty, and no one wanted to be the one accused of giving away all that money for nothing.

[rudymantel]

I'm not a huge fan of Phil Boyer/ AOPA but it's the only lobby wev'e got
and I'd hate to see them bite the dust.
We can never compete with the military-industrial complex Ike warned us about. Same with the airlnes. Notice the new tough bankruptcy law applies to people who mainly file for relief due to medical expenses, not to the airlines- but this is definitely getting off topic-
Rudy

[lowNslow]

I'm not a huge fan of Phil Boyer/ AOPA but it's the only lobby wev'e got
and I'd hate to see them bite the dust.
We can never compete with the military-industrial complex Ike warned us about. Same with the airlnes. Notice the new tough bankruptcy law applies to people who mainly file for relief due to medical expenses, not to the airlines- but this is definitely getting off topic-
Rudy

Rudy,just to correct your statement, the reason Delta and Northwest filed bankruptcy when they did was to avoid the new laws which don't take affect until October 17.

[philnino]

I usually pick most stuff off of fltplan.com. Seems to work pretty well and the planning tools helpful. The best part is I can file and get weather on my blackberry. It is still hard to beat a real voice on the FSS line for information if you can stand the wait. Phillip

[flyguy]

I have used this site and I like the "contour plot" features.

http://weather.unisys.com/surface/index.html

Another I like because it gives 12 and 24 hour "maybe" maps.

http://aviationweather.gov//data/produc ... cl_new.gif

and the last

http://asp1.sbs.ohio-state.edu/