meteorological capability

[marpdiaz]

Cell phone coverage is getting better. In the region I fly more often I get signal about 40% to 60% of the time. On the other hand, most meteo images that are useful in flight are small in size (~10⁴ bytes) and have local coverage (few hundred miles at most).

Here is one example of an age coded lightning map that allow us to see the movement of convective systems. It is updated in 2 min intervals at the website:

last.png (29.93 KiB) Viewed 17480 times

A "simple" way to implement meteorological capabilities is leave to the user the input of his/her favorite URL pointing to a meteo image (precip, lightning, cloud tops, whatever). Associated with it, the user may define a linear georef (2 points, 2 coordinates) for such images and a refresh (download attempt) time interval.
A flag can warn the user that last download attempt was unsuccessful and the map is getting old - but still better than those from preflight weather briefing. Availability of directly downloadable images may be an issue.

A fifth FIF screen with a recently dowloaded meteo image can make the difference to divert wisely and get us out of trouble.

clear skies,

Marcos

[flyyyer]

I am experimenting with using an app called "Aircraft Radar" I think it is only UK but looks and feels like a big aircraft weather radar.
Uses mobile data for the Met. Great if added within FIF maybe as a 5th screen or a quick show on the map.

Peter G

[Werner]

My experience with the weather radar sites is that the mountains false the indication. The problem is that the false negative indications causes trouble.
For exemple, a destination airport can be visualized on the radar site complete free of rain, but in reality its submerged with precipitations, because on this area, the radar detects only over 6000ft.
An other question is the wind and the cloud covering. This is normally very accurate.

[kitercuda]

Next week I will start implementing weather to FIF...

[marpdiaz]

The Rainfall Radar Display works great!! I recently had to keep a distance from weather and could see it depicted in FiF.

Given that the data link is often lost (sometimes for long periods), it would be nice to know how long ago was last radar update.

I suggest adding an option for displaying the time in minutes since last completed WX download. This could be a simple timer selected by the user to occupy a screen indicator (that automatically resets to zero when a fresh radar image arrives).

[kitercuda]

Hi, I was thinking about the same - Pilot must know, how old the rainfal data is.

[Johannes]

Hi, it is also very important to understand in which direction the weather is moving. That could be visualized by using the data from the past hour and make an animation which is presented instead (or as an alternative) of the static image.

Even better for flight planning would be if we could zoom out more than the 60nm (I would like to see be able to zoom out to at least 1.200nm)

[marpdiaz]

The RRA (Rainfall Radar Age) timer is exactly what i meant. Essential info in fast changing weather.

thanks !

[kitercuda]

Now you can tap it - for switch on / off ranfall radar.

[Johannes]

No plans for animated weather?
Should be fairly easy to inplement I guess.