Thunderstorms have overturned a heavily loaded tractor-trailer rig on an interstate within a mile of your destination airport. Everyone in your hometown is watching The Weather Channel's radar, hearing about the wind — and even the truck. Sitting at 6,500 feet in deteriorating VFR weather, all you know is that there is a lot of lightning in the general direction in which you are traveling. You don't know about the high winds. You are getting close, and it's 10:02 p.m. Who ya gonna call?
How about the "weather busters" at flight watch? Sounds reasonable. Quick, here's the frequency: 122.0 MHz for low-level travelers (5,000 to 18,000 feet), and 134.52 MHz for high-level pilots. You'll use 122.0, of course. Now, which one are you going to call? You are near the Washington, D.C., area, and the list of flight watch stations in the back of the Airport/Facility Directory shows one at the automated flight service station in Leesburg, Virginia. Please don't issue a general call to any flight watch just to see who answers. Every flight watch station for miles around will answer.
Wow, listen to that frequency. Everyone is calling (even one guy who says he needs a full-route briefing, but everyone knows that you're supposed to get that on the ground before departure). Hmmm, flight watch doesn't seem to be answering. Better give them the exact information they need on the first call. What flight watch wants from you is your position, altitude, aircraft type, and identification.
"Leesburg Flight Watch, Bonanza Seven-Two-Three-Six Whiskey, 6,000 feet, 40 miles northwest of Baltimore (or give nearest VOR)." Now, flight watch should come back through one of its nine remote communications outlets. Any minute now. But nothing. Other anxious pilots break in, hoping they will have better luck than you did.
Flight watch isn't going to answer you or anyone else, though, since it operates only from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. You and the other pilots are 2 minutes too late. Now what?
Better switch over to a flight service station frequency listed on your chart and talk with a flight briefer. The briefers at automated flight service stations can call up the same computer screens used by flight watch and provide some guidance. They will generally have information or even radar displays set up, showing the worst weather in their region. But if you ask for weather outside the region, the briefers will ask you to call back in 10 minutes to allow time for calling up additional radar data.
Finally you learn what you need to know. The destination airport is plastered with thunderstorms, so you land at an airport 20 miles short and wait out the weather.
There are other sources of in-flight weather available, of course. Air route traffic controllers, if they have the weather overlay activated, can show only heavy and light areas of precipitation. They show nothing in between; two levels are all that the narrow-band radar will support. Often controllers leave the weather function turned off unless extreme weather conditions are present, because their primary concern is to separate aircraft. Their radars have no ability to show turbulence, but the pilot may assume that there is turbulence around heavy precipitation.
If you are lucky and well-heeled enough to have one of the new datalink systems in your aircraft, all of the weather text and graphics you need will be broadcast to your aircraft.
If you are navigating by a VOR equipped to provide HIWAS (hazardous in-flight weather advisory service) tape-recorded information, just turn up the volume. The recording, made at a nearby flight service station, tells you that there are indeed warnings for thunderstorms, but you knew that. Maybe you want to tune in a TWEB (transcribed weather broadcast), which is similar to a HIWAS but provides short-term weather for the local area. Uh oh, sounds as if you got your pilot certificate a few years back, right? TWEBs are pretty much obsolete — Leesburg hasn't recorded one in 15 years — but they are still in use in the West. VORs providing TWEB information will have a circle with a "T" in one corner of the VOR information box, while HIWAS capability is denoted by a black square in the lower right corner of the box.
What else might you have done? Let's say the briefers are busy and don't come back right away. Try listening to nearby ATIS information or AWOS and ASOS stations. The frequencies are in the Airport/Facility Directory and are also on VFR and IFR charts.
There's one final method for gathering weather information — look. And if you don't like what you see, land at the first convenient airport and watch The Weather Channel with the rest of the ground pounders.
AOPA'S Online Weather
A flight service station on your computer
What's new on the AOPA Online Web page? Thanks for asking. Seth Golbey hinted broadly in AOPA Pilot two months ago that AOPA Online would grow rapidly (see " AOPA on the 'Net," April Pilot). A few days later, AOPA joined forces with American Weather Concepts, a new company located north of Pittsburgh, to provide you with dozens of free weather graphics and text products.
In addition, AOPA negotiated a 20-percent discount off AWC's real-time full weather service, including 15-minute radar updates and a dozen more products of interest to pilots. The monthly cost is about the same as a workday lunch: $4 for basic service. For an additional $2.40, you can have 15-minute updates of Doppler radar in your area, a total of $6.40 a month. More about that later.
To get the free products from AWC, you will need to be an AOPA member and log on to the "Members Only" section of the AOPA site (www.aopa.org). To qualify for the 20-percent discount, you will need to register with AWC through the AOPA site.
First, here's a quick look at the free products. Ever get a 4-day graphical weather outlook from a flight service station? It is not offered by the National Weather Service, of course. But AWC has color charts forecasting the weather from 12 hours to 4 days ahead, based on a compilation of National Weather Service data and forecasts by AWC's own weather analysts. They don't just colorize the data from the federal government, as do some other weather providers. The charts provide a rough idea of whether that flight you hope to make a few days from now will be possible. It is very similar to The Weather Channel's 5-day forecast — graphical and easy to understand — only you don't have to wait until 21 minutes after the hour to see it.
You will also link to more than 130 Doppler weather radar sites around the nation for radar pictures updated hourly. The Texas A&M-trained weather forecasters at AWC had to work very hard on the computer links to the various Doppler sites to provide this service, and pilots will refer to it constantly. Simply click on a site shown on a map nearest you or your route of flight and the radar picture is quickly retrieved. AWC has made a careful choice of colors so that light rain is easily distinguished from moderate or heavy precipitation. In fact, AWC charts are the best reasons you will ever have to get a color printer for your computer. A chart can quickly present information that may take reams of textual information to explain.
Winds-aloft charts show direction and speed for 5,000 feet, 10,000 feet, 18,000 feet, 30,000 feet, and 38,000 feet. The length of the arrows used to show direction of flow also indicate wind speed. The charts are much easier to read than the pennants found on government and other wind charts. The charts are also colored to show broad areas of similar wind speeds at a glance.
In addition to winds-aloft information, charts will provide weather depiction, surface station plots, infrared satellite imagery, and nearly a dozen standard aviation textual reports such as notams, pireps, METARS and TAFS.
Now, let's look in depth at the additional products you get for only $4 a month, and, if you so desire, the $2.40 for 15-minute Doppler. (It's summer, and you will want radar updates more often than once an hour.) There are flight-level hazards charts that make it easy to spot freezing levels and turbulence; satellite data; airport delay charts that highlight IFR and marginal VFR weather; infrared satellite/radar composite loops; AvCast, a point-and-click radar map of the nation that allows you to get detailed, decoded aviation weather products for selected areas; and AWC's just-completed AvCast Pro search engine. AvCast Pro compiles weather data for up to three airports at a time for easy viewing or printing. The weather services are similar to those provided to many FBOs at $45 a month or more.
The AvCast page warrants a special mention. AWC offers two similar graphical links to textual information; one is AvCast, and the other is called Quickcast. Pilots will always want to use AvCast because it offers extra weather products of interest to aviators. Both start with a composite radar summary chart that alerts the pilot to any weather problems along the route. By your using a computer mouse and clicking on the area of interest, the screen changes to a regional map of the area and a list of weather products. Select a product and click on a weather reporting station shown on the map; the retrieved information appears below the chart. Scroll up and there it is. You may also select Nexrad radar pictures from this page.
AvCast Pro was created in late April as a new service for AOPA members and other pilots. The Internet page managers at AWC are beginning to customize their service to allow selection of a larger number of products at one time. While in development, the page allowed only weather information for two cities at a time to be selected. By the time the page was placed on the AWC site ( www.weatherconcepts.com), three cities at a time could be selected, allowing for departure, destination, and an intermediate stop. The AWC folks are expanding their services very rapidly and are already at work on additional services for pilots. For example, an improved weather loop system will be in place by mid-summer. Until then, AWC officials plan to mark charts with cloud tops and cell movement so that pilots can answer a basic question: "Which way is the storm going?" Of course, wind charts can help determine direction. Pilots should be aware that the AWC staff cannot support the software you download for weather looping capability, so don't call for assistance. Additionally, it should be pointed out that AWC does not offer pilot briefings over the phone. Finally, since AWC is a private company, pilots should still check DUATS or call the flight service station to meet legal requirements for the flight.
Pilots at AOPA flew a route between two cities in Maryland in light to moderate rain and compared actual conditions with an AWC forecast chart. Maybe the forecasters were just having a good day, but they hit the intensity and, more important, the location of the precipitation exactly.
It isn't an overstatement to say that subscribing to AWC is like having an airline-quality private weather service at your fingertips. As a matter of fact, Trans World Airlines, Reno Air, and Executive Jet are among its customers. You do have an airline flight department working for you. Try it. — AKM
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