Thu Aug 24, 2017 12:13 am
#1554575
Dave W wrote:Weather avoidance on long distance VFR trips has been a consistent source of uncertainty for me. Do I head East here? West there? Give up and land now, or carry on - looking over my shoulder to be sure I'm not being boxed in - before heading back the way I came to abort?
If only I could see near real time rain and cloud developing whilst I am en-route rather than assuming that what it looked as if it was going to do 3 hours ago when I started this leg is what it is actually doing. FIS by voice VHF is all very well giving me METAR, but that only gives me spot information. For area information, I need to assimilate a picture.
So: FIS-B would be truly valuable.
It isn't really "real-time" though. The accident report section in Pilot magazine this month, sorry Ian, has a couple of american fatal accidents caused by exactly this problem.
Pilots navigated based on the in-cockpit weather data, except the data was out of date and so they flew into trouble, middle of a thunderstorm in one case. Result in in-flight breakup of the aeroplane.
This isn't weather radar. There is a significant lag while the data is accumulated, synthesised and then distributed, according to the report, of over 15 minutes. A lot can happen to a storm in 15 minutes.
I use online rain radar and other stuff on the ground. But I do wonder if there is a danger of people seeing this as a poor-person's weather radar?