Preflight

Beyond METARs And TAFs

As contributing writer, flight instructor, and airline pilot Karen M. Kahn notes in "Weather or Not" , for most pilots, learning the fine art of weather analysis may be the most difficult aspect of learning how to fly.

Note that she says pilots, not student pilots. That's not an oversight. Primary flight training does a pretty good job of teaching us how to decode METARs and TAFs. But the curriculum just doesn't provide enough opportunities for a student, flying with his or her instructor, to encounter all the possible weather scenarios. That real-world understanding comes only with hundreds and thousands of hours of flight time. Indeed, this learning process will continue as long as we fly.

But how can we facilitate the process?

One of the best things we can do is fly - both ourselves and with more experienced pilots. The more cross-country time we accumulate, the more we'll be exposed to changing atmospheric conditions. Each time we make a go/no-go decision, we learn more about the weather. Each time we divert en route because of the weather, it stands to reason that we learn even more.

I've managed to avoid diverting because I'm conservative in my weather decisions. When I was a VFR-only pilot, I cancelled several trips because of clouds. One Thanksgiving weekend found a strong cold front passing through on Wednesday evening, so we delayed our departure for Kentucky until Thursday morning - which dawned beautiful, clear, and very windy. The briefing included a sigmet for moderate to severe turbulence along most of the route, with a brutal headwind. Reluctantly we loaded the car. At our gas stop in Flatwoods, West Virginia, I called Flight Service for an updated briefing. Only a few pilot reports had been filed in the past couple hours, but most were from larger aircraft than the plane we had planned to fly, and all reported rough rides. I felt much better about the no-go decision.

Some flight instructors encourage their students to study the weather, plan flights that they never intend to fly, get a full weather briefing, and make the go/no-go decision. Then, when enough time has elapsed to complete the flight, they can call Flight Service again, obtain current conditions along the route and at the destination, and learn whether they made the right call. This is a great way to begin developing a weather curiosity that can lead to weather wisdom.

Flight Service is a great resource, especially for student and new pilots. Even if you prefer to check the weather online or through DUAT, and especially if you're uncertain, a conversation with a briefer can help you to make a safe decision. If your airport has a flight service station on the field, try getting a briefing in person.

Years ago, when I was a beginning student pilot, I flew from North Carolina to Key West, Florida, with a more experienced private-pilot friend. Neither of us had flown in Florida before. As we approached Jacksonville, building cumulus clouds were all we could see. The airplane's Stormscope, which detects electrical energy given off by lightning strikes, confirmed that convective heating was helping the clouds to grow into thunderstorms.

We landed at Craig Municipal Airport in Jacksonville expecting to stay overnight. After placing a fuel order, we walked next door to the now-closed flight service station. "Oh, these buildups are no problem," the briefer told us. "They'll stay over land until after sunset. You can fly right down the coast and avoid them; if you ever don't like what you see, there's an airport every few miles." The briefer's local knowledge made all the difference, and we landed at Key West in time for dinner.

In the coming year, many flight service briefers should receive a new tool that will help them serve pilots more efficiently. OASIS - which stands for the Operational and Supportability Implementation System - has already been rolled out at automated flight service stations in Seattle, Washington, and Anderson, South Carolina. Among other significant improvements, OASIS will allow briefers to overlay a pilot's planned route of flight on weather charts and other graphical information.

For now, pilots receiving OASIS briefings may not notice any change. Briefing formats remain the same, although information should be more relevant to the route of flight, and the data - including notams - will be available to the briefer more quickly. But planned future enhancements to the system would allow a pilot to log into an OASIS Web site while talking with a briefer by telephone; both would see identical information on their computer monitors. Although this capability will be years away, it has the potential to significantly help CFIs instruct pilots about aviation weather.

Think about it: Virtual personal weather briefings as close as the nearest personal computer. A capability like that sure could help pilots learn the fine art of weather analysis.