1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,445 [CLICKING] 2 00:00:16,132 --> 00:00:17,590 PHILIP GREENSPUN: All right, folks. 3 00:00:17,590 --> 00:00:19,673 I know you're excited to learn about weather data. 4 00:00:22,223 --> 00:00:24,640 I've been told you're excited to learn about weather data. 5 00:00:27,628 --> 00:00:29,170 I'm going to do the first few slides. 6 00:00:29,170 --> 00:00:31,030 Tina's going to take over for the ones that 7 00:00:31,030 --> 00:00:32,830 require intelligence. 8 00:00:32,830 --> 00:00:34,900 And I'm going to come back at the end. 9 00:00:34,900 --> 00:00:36,700 OK. 10 00:00:36,700 --> 00:00:40,300 Remember that VFR, ordinarily, is 11 00:00:40,300 --> 00:00:45,130 a ceiling of 1,000 feet or more and visibility 12 00:00:45,130 --> 00:00:46,570 of three statute miles or more. 13 00:00:46,570 --> 00:00:49,180 That's one of the few things in aviation 14 00:00:49,180 --> 00:00:54,700 that's reported in statute miles is the visibility. 15 00:00:54,700 --> 00:00:56,860 As Tina mentioned earlier, a ceiling 16 00:00:56,860 --> 00:01:01,570 is a broken or overcast layer, or sometimes, 17 00:01:01,570 --> 00:01:05,638 if it's really nasty, you'll see a vertical visibility reported. 18 00:01:05,638 --> 00:01:07,180 So here are some of the abbreviations 19 00:01:07,180 --> 00:01:08,680 that you might see on the right in a 20 00:01:08,680 --> 00:01:11,410 METAR. 21 00:01:11,410 --> 00:01:15,580 Remember these weather minimums, so VFR pilots, 22 00:01:15,580 --> 00:01:17,200 we're looking at the weather reports 23 00:01:17,200 --> 00:01:19,533 to see if we're going to be able to maintain these cloud 24 00:01:19,533 --> 00:01:23,360 clearances and, generally, stay out of the clouds. 25 00:01:23,360 --> 00:01:29,290 So I wanted to tell you that it's not quite as hard as you 26 00:01:29,290 --> 00:01:31,870 might think because computer programs make 27 00:01:31,870 --> 00:01:35,908 a lot of what you're going to learn about simpler. 28 00:01:35,908 --> 00:01:38,450 On the other hand, we want to give you the good fundamentals, 29 00:01:38,450 --> 00:01:40,000 because what we're going to show you, 30 00:01:40,000 --> 00:01:43,930 these are the basis of what these computer programs are 31 00:01:43,930 --> 00:01:44,950 presenting to you. 32 00:01:44,950 --> 00:01:47,350 They're oftentimes getting the same data 33 00:01:47,350 --> 00:01:51,130 and spinning it in some interesting graphical way. 34 00:01:51,130 --> 00:01:54,238 So we're going to show you all the fundamental text 35 00:01:54,238 --> 00:01:55,780 weather that people have been relying 36 00:01:55,780 --> 00:01:58,030 on since at least the '50s. 37 00:01:58,030 --> 00:02:00,160 There are weather graphics you can grab on the web 38 00:02:00,160 --> 00:02:01,523 or sometimes in flight. 39 00:02:01,523 --> 00:02:03,190 How do you get the weather on the ground 40 00:02:03,190 --> 00:02:05,200 and how do you get it in the air? 41 00:02:05,200 --> 00:02:10,360 So most of what you're going to see 42 00:02:10,360 --> 00:02:13,690 in the rest of this presentation can actually 43 00:02:13,690 --> 00:02:17,200 be summarized by clever programmers. 44 00:02:17,200 --> 00:02:20,380 And I think the cleverest programmer of all 45 00:02:20,380 --> 00:02:25,330 is this guy David Boozer who taught the class last year. 46 00:02:25,330 --> 00:02:28,360 And fortunately, he's taking a jet type-- well, fortunately, 47 00:02:28,360 --> 00:02:31,080 for him he's taking a jet type rating course right now. 48 00:02:31,080 --> 00:02:36,460 So he couldn't be with us, but here is WeatherSpork. 49 00:02:36,460 --> 00:02:40,000 If you want to ever have a good illustration of the value 50 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:42,970 of an MBA and studying marketing, 51 00:02:42,970 --> 00:02:47,920 just think about the name for this product of WeatherSpork. 52 00:02:47,920 --> 00:02:50,380 Let's say we want to go from Bedford to the Gaithersburg, 53 00:02:50,380 --> 00:02:52,140 Maryland airport. 54 00:02:52,140 --> 00:02:54,320 It's going to show us-- 55 00:02:54,320 --> 00:02:56,470 this was I think from Sunday evening. 56 00:02:56,470 --> 00:02:58,540 It's pretty nasty here at Bedford. 57 00:02:58,540 --> 00:03:03,600 I believe that's low IFR, that purple, and then here 58 00:03:03,600 --> 00:03:05,680 a marginal VFR, marginal VFR. 59 00:03:08,230 --> 00:03:11,320 Actually, sorry, maybe the blue is a VFR. 60 00:03:11,320 --> 00:03:13,570 That's the problem with color codes. 61 00:03:13,570 --> 00:03:17,740 Anyway, you get these symbols for VFR, marginal VFR, IFR, 62 00:03:17,740 --> 00:03:19,570 and low IFR. 63 00:03:19,570 --> 00:03:21,940 But here, here's the altitude. 64 00:03:21,940 --> 00:03:27,430 We're going from C level up to 11,000 feet or 12,000 feet 65 00:03:27,430 --> 00:03:28,480 at the top. 66 00:03:28,480 --> 00:03:30,760 It shows you inside this blue area 67 00:03:30,760 --> 00:03:32,050 where the freezing levels are. 68 00:03:32,050 --> 00:03:34,090 It's kind of a weird mixed up situation here 69 00:03:34,090 --> 00:03:37,570 with this freezing level here, another freezing level here. 70 00:03:37,570 --> 00:03:38,950 There's AIRMETs. 71 00:03:38,950 --> 00:03:40,360 It looks pretty scary. 72 00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:43,480 Once we get down closer to the DC area, it's not so bad. 73 00:03:43,480 --> 00:03:47,350 There's only one AIRMET and it looks 74 00:03:47,350 --> 00:03:50,080 like we could be in the clear of the clouds up here. 75 00:03:50,080 --> 00:03:51,580 But this is a good way to summarize. 76 00:03:51,580 --> 00:03:54,400 It this already shows you that it's probably not 77 00:03:54,400 --> 00:03:58,150 going to be wise to go on Sunday at, 78 00:03:58,150 --> 00:04:00,840 I guess, this was Sunday at 1:00 PM. 79 00:04:00,840 --> 00:04:02,430 OK. 80 00:04:02,430 --> 00:04:05,770 Here, notice on the bottom, the time keeps changing. 81 00:04:05,770 --> 00:04:08,710 So we're going from Sunday at 1:00 PM. 82 00:04:08,710 --> 00:04:13,990 The middle screen capture is to go Sunday at 10:00 PM. 83 00:04:13,990 --> 00:04:15,610 This is at eastern time. 84 00:04:15,610 --> 00:04:18,279 And the last one is to go Monday at 8:30. 85 00:04:18,279 --> 00:04:23,290 So you can see from this already that you could take off 86 00:04:23,290 --> 00:04:26,770 from Hanscom field, rise up to 1,500 feet 87 00:04:26,770 --> 00:04:30,850 or so on the right, and just cruise 88 00:04:30,850 --> 00:04:33,430 along never even getting inside a cloud 89 00:04:33,430 --> 00:04:35,050 until you landed at Gaithersburg. 90 00:04:35,050 --> 00:04:37,480 That's kind of a low altitude, so you might end up 91 00:04:37,480 --> 00:04:40,780 deciding, well, what I really want to do is find a hole 92 00:04:40,780 --> 00:04:44,230 and go up to about 7,000 or 8,000 feet and go on top of it 93 00:04:44,230 --> 00:04:46,330 all and come back down, but whatever. 94 00:04:46,330 --> 00:04:49,360 It looks like you could probably remain clear of clouds, 95 00:04:49,360 --> 00:04:51,160 make it to your destination. 96 00:04:51,160 --> 00:04:54,370 You're not going to pass through a lot of AIRMETs. 97 00:04:54,370 --> 00:04:57,130 Over here, let's look at this one in the middle 98 00:04:57,130 --> 00:05:01,590 because it's not quite as terrifying. 99 00:05:01,590 --> 00:05:04,710 There's a low turbulence low from the surface all the way up 100 00:05:04,710 --> 00:05:06,700 to 18,000 feet. 101 00:05:06,700 --> 00:05:09,780 If it says a turbulence AIRMET that goes up to 8,000, 102 00:05:09,780 --> 00:05:11,160 that's kind of normal. 103 00:05:11,160 --> 00:05:13,980 And oftentimes, if you climb to four or five or six, 104 00:05:13,980 --> 00:05:14,910 it'll smooth out. 105 00:05:14,910 --> 00:05:17,160 But if the turbulence is forecast to go all the way up 106 00:05:17,160 --> 00:05:20,160 into the flight levels, you know that's a pretty ugly day. 107 00:05:20,160 --> 00:05:22,202 They're saying there's going to be low level wind 108 00:05:22,202 --> 00:05:23,940 shear from zero to 2000 feet. 109 00:05:23,940 --> 00:05:26,700 There's going to be IFR conditions. 110 00:05:26,700 --> 00:05:29,050 And it's going to be gusting 18 knots, so all of that 111 00:05:29,050 --> 00:05:33,450 is pretty bad unless you really have to go. 112 00:05:33,450 --> 00:05:35,520 Here look, icing from the freezing level 113 00:05:35,520 --> 00:05:43,740 up to flight level 230, just a collection of hazards. 114 00:05:43,740 --> 00:05:47,340 But also look at the difference between Sunday and Monday. 115 00:05:47,340 --> 00:05:49,860 If you just hang out in the ground and you're patient. 116 00:05:49,860 --> 00:05:51,570 You don't need a superior level of skill 117 00:05:51,570 --> 00:05:54,268 if you have a superior level of judgment. 118 00:05:54,268 --> 00:05:56,310 Here's some more presentations from WeatherSpork. 119 00:05:56,310 --> 00:05:58,830 Again, I kind of love this app. 120 00:05:58,830 --> 00:06:01,750 You have all the airports you're going to fly near. 121 00:06:01,750 --> 00:06:03,870 So you go from Bedford to Worcester, 122 00:06:03,870 --> 00:06:06,630 some places in Connecticut. 123 00:06:06,630 --> 00:06:11,230 I think that's Morristown in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 124 00:06:11,230 --> 00:06:16,830 Lancaster, anyway, on the way to Gaithersburg. 125 00:06:16,830 --> 00:06:19,590 And it shows you here's your time of departure. 126 00:06:19,590 --> 00:06:23,280 You're going to depart, but hey look, It would just get to be-- 127 00:06:23,280 --> 00:06:24,030 I guess that is. 128 00:06:24,030 --> 00:06:27,510 That does mean blue must be marginal VFR, and then 129 00:06:27,510 --> 00:06:29,010 green it's going to be windy, but it 130 00:06:29,010 --> 00:06:30,589 will be nice VFR weather. 131 00:06:30,589 --> 00:06:32,047 So if we just wait a little bit, we 132 00:06:32,047 --> 00:06:36,660 won't have to fly through any areas that are challenging. 133 00:06:36,660 --> 00:06:42,360 ForeFlight has a mode where you can ask for your weather 134 00:06:42,360 --> 00:06:44,080 briefing in a PDF format. 135 00:06:44,080 --> 00:06:46,125 And this is the first page of that PDF format. 136 00:06:46,125 --> 00:06:48,920 It shows some of the same ideas. 137 00:06:48,920 --> 00:06:56,020 There are these graphics, these blue half moons, if you will, 138 00:06:56,020 --> 00:06:57,150 for icing. 139 00:06:57,150 --> 00:06:58,650 You can see there's a key down here. 140 00:06:58,650 --> 00:07:01,040 It says icing severity. 141 00:07:01,040 --> 00:07:03,637 So up here, you've got varying degrees of ice. 142 00:07:03,637 --> 00:07:05,220 You probably don't want to be up there 143 00:07:05,220 --> 00:07:06,930 in an aircraft like the Cirrus. 144 00:07:06,930 --> 00:07:10,360 It doesn't have de-icing capability. 145 00:07:10,360 --> 00:07:12,880 So now I think it said all up to Tina 146 00:07:12,880 --> 00:07:19,795 to talk about the exciting world of actual weather data. 147 00:07:19,795 --> 00:07:20,920 TINA SRIVASTAVA: All right. 148 00:07:20,920 --> 00:07:23,260 So we're going to talk about weather data 149 00:07:23,260 --> 00:07:27,130 in the form of reports as well as forecasts. 150 00:07:27,130 --> 00:07:29,950 So what is the difference between a report 151 00:07:29,950 --> 00:07:31,180 and a forecast? 152 00:07:31,180 --> 00:07:33,070 So a report is actually telling you 153 00:07:33,070 --> 00:07:36,430 what's actually happening, so it's a current weather 154 00:07:36,430 --> 00:07:39,340 condition at a particular location. 155 00:07:39,340 --> 00:07:42,340 A forecast is a forecast. 156 00:07:42,340 --> 00:07:45,040 It's a guess as to what is going to happen. 157 00:07:45,040 --> 00:07:49,000 So it's really important to know the difference between these. 158 00:07:49,000 --> 00:07:52,160 We now have Mark Nathanson up in the back 159 00:07:52,160 --> 00:07:53,830 who's going to be talking to you at 4:00 160 00:07:53,830 --> 00:07:55,060 about some really cool stuff. 161 00:07:55,060 --> 00:07:57,820 And as we talked about, he's an FAA examiner. 162 00:07:57,820 --> 00:07:59,890 Probably doesn't remember this, but he asked me 163 00:07:59,890 --> 00:08:06,190 during my oral exam, for a given piece of weather data, 164 00:08:06,190 --> 00:08:08,570 is that a report or a forecast? 165 00:08:08,570 --> 00:08:11,830 And if it's a forecast, how much should I rely on that 166 00:08:11,830 --> 00:08:12,855 or depend on that? 167 00:08:12,855 --> 00:08:14,230 And so that's something to really 168 00:08:14,230 --> 00:08:16,180 keep in mind the difference between knowing 169 00:08:16,180 --> 00:08:18,760 what the actual situation is and what somebody guesses 170 00:08:18,760 --> 00:08:20,620 the situation is going to be. 171 00:08:20,620 --> 00:08:24,130 And of course, depending how far out that guess is, 172 00:08:24,130 --> 00:08:27,700 it may or may not actually turn out to be true. 173 00:08:27,700 --> 00:08:31,630 So a METAR is a report, and so it's 174 00:08:31,630 --> 00:08:33,460 timestamped so it will tell you the weather 175 00:08:33,460 --> 00:08:36,640 at a particular time and a particular location. 176 00:08:36,640 --> 00:08:38,500 And one thing that's important to think 177 00:08:38,500 --> 00:08:40,450 about when you think about direction 178 00:08:40,450 --> 00:08:42,830 is the way that the wind is reported. 179 00:08:42,830 --> 00:08:45,868 So if you hear it, so like if you're listening to the ADDS. 180 00:08:45,868 --> 00:08:47,410 We talked about the ADDS quite a bit, 181 00:08:47,410 --> 00:08:49,780 so you tune in the ADDS frequency and you listen to it. 182 00:08:49,780 --> 00:08:51,820 They're going to be telling you that wind 183 00:08:51,820 --> 00:08:53,590 direction in magnetic. 184 00:08:53,590 --> 00:08:56,680 If you read it on a printed document, 185 00:08:56,680 --> 00:08:59,800 it's pretty much always at true heading. 186 00:08:59,800 --> 00:09:03,280 And certainly, on the internet as we'll give you some sources, 187 00:09:03,280 --> 00:09:06,670 that's like the same as reading it. 188 00:09:06,670 --> 00:09:08,410 We already covered ceilings. 189 00:09:08,410 --> 00:09:09,460 I won't get into that. 190 00:09:09,460 --> 00:09:12,370 So let's just talk about the breakdown of a METAR report. 191 00:09:12,370 --> 00:09:16,990 So I discussed that generally, for example, at Bedford. 192 00:09:16,990 --> 00:09:20,230 You might hear the METAR updated every hour or so. 193 00:09:20,230 --> 00:09:21,940 And we talked about the identifier, 194 00:09:21,940 --> 00:09:24,640 that this is information whiskey, 195 00:09:24,640 --> 00:09:27,370 maybe an hour later it's the next 196 00:09:27,370 --> 00:09:29,320 as they keep going through the alphabet. 197 00:09:29,320 --> 00:09:32,440 And one time that you might see it updated 198 00:09:32,440 --> 00:09:34,930 more frequently than once every hour or so 199 00:09:34,930 --> 00:09:37,643 is if they need to do a special report. 200 00:09:37,643 --> 00:09:40,060 And so that's the other type of acronym that you see there 201 00:09:40,060 --> 00:09:45,250 S-P-E-C-I, and that's if the weather is changing a lot. 202 00:09:45,250 --> 00:09:47,500 That's usually a bad thing. 203 00:09:47,500 --> 00:09:49,372 You don't like weather changing frequently. 204 00:09:49,372 --> 00:09:51,580 It's probably not something you want to be flying in, 205 00:09:51,580 --> 00:09:55,180 but maybe the conditions are deteriorating, 206 00:09:55,180 --> 00:09:58,000 the wind or the conditions or the ceiling 207 00:09:58,000 --> 00:09:59,620 has changed significantly, so they'll 208 00:09:59,620 --> 00:10:02,540 update that information. 209 00:10:02,540 --> 00:10:06,070 So there are a whole bunch of different abbreviations 210 00:10:06,070 --> 00:10:08,050 when you read these reports. 211 00:10:08,050 --> 00:10:10,580 I highlighted a couple in red. 212 00:10:10,580 --> 00:10:13,570 You could make your way through sort of guessing, OK, 213 00:10:13,570 --> 00:10:15,430 thunderstorms is TS. 214 00:10:15,430 --> 00:10:17,440 It seems kind of intuitive, but I 215 00:10:17,440 --> 00:10:20,410 highlighted some that are really, really kind of get you. 216 00:10:20,410 --> 00:10:25,030 So hail is GR and mist is BR, as someone was pointing out 217 00:10:25,030 --> 00:10:25,630 on this side. 218 00:10:25,630 --> 00:10:29,750 Yeah, so mist, if you just look at it and you try to think, 219 00:10:29,750 --> 00:10:30,610 oh, is it broken? 220 00:10:30,610 --> 00:10:32,435 No, broken is BKR. 221 00:10:32,435 --> 00:10:34,185 So they just try to trick you with that's, 222 00:10:34,185 --> 00:10:37,185 so try to keep an eye on those, and it's 223 00:10:37,185 --> 00:10:38,890 good to refresh your memory on these. 224 00:10:41,710 --> 00:10:44,790 So this is an example of a METAR report. 225 00:10:44,790 --> 00:10:47,310 So it starts off with the location 226 00:10:47,310 --> 00:10:50,220 and then the first two numbers, the 16, 227 00:10:50,220 --> 00:10:53,440 are telling you that it's a 16th day of the month. 228 00:10:53,440 --> 00:10:57,030 And then it's followed by 1653, so that's the time 229 00:10:57,030 --> 00:10:58,950 and has a Z for time in Zulu. 230 00:10:58,950 --> 00:11:03,570 We already talked about how you subtract hours 231 00:11:03,570 --> 00:11:06,570 depending on Eastern standard time versus Daylight Time 232 00:11:06,570 --> 00:11:08,440 to get to the current time. 233 00:11:08,440 --> 00:11:11,430 And then instead of telling you a heading of the wind, 234 00:11:11,430 --> 00:11:13,530 in this case, it has variables. 235 00:11:13,530 --> 00:11:17,070 So sometimes, it will say winds variable at about four knots, 236 00:11:17,070 --> 00:11:18,840 in this case. 237 00:11:18,840 --> 00:11:20,700 And then the next is the visibility, 238 00:11:20,700 --> 00:11:24,090 so 10 SM is standing for 10 statute miles. 239 00:11:24,090 --> 00:11:25,620 And then, in this case, the ceiling 240 00:11:25,620 --> 00:11:28,860 is overcast, overcast at 6,000. 241 00:11:28,860 --> 00:11:34,830 The next two numbers, you see the 14 slash 07? 242 00:11:34,830 --> 00:11:39,990 So that's talking about the temperature and the dew point. 243 00:11:39,990 --> 00:11:42,680 So who remembers what is dew point? 244 00:11:47,520 --> 00:11:48,196 Yes. 245 00:11:48,196 --> 00:11:49,821 AUDIENCE: The temperature where the air 246 00:11:49,821 --> 00:11:51,717 reaches saturation for water. 247 00:11:51,717 --> 00:11:53,550 TINA SRIVASTAVA: So we heard the temperature 248 00:11:53,550 --> 00:11:56,250 where the air reaches saturation for water. 249 00:11:56,250 --> 00:11:59,130 So what happens when the dew point and the temperature 250 00:11:59,130 --> 00:12:00,940 are very close to each other? 251 00:12:00,940 --> 00:12:04,470 So here, we have seven degrees Celsius for dew point, 252 00:12:04,470 --> 00:12:06,840 14 degrees Celsius for temperature. 253 00:12:06,840 --> 00:12:08,890 What if the dew point and the temperature 254 00:12:08,890 --> 00:12:11,850 were much closer, only a couple degrees apart? 255 00:12:11,850 --> 00:12:12,350 Yes. 256 00:12:12,350 --> 00:12:13,517 AUDIENCE: Clouds would form. 257 00:12:13,517 --> 00:12:15,750 TINA SRIVASTAVA: Yeah, it can be very humid. 258 00:12:15,750 --> 00:12:19,050 You could be inside of a cloud or heavy fog or precipitation. 259 00:12:19,050 --> 00:12:21,610 Exactly. 260 00:12:21,610 --> 00:12:25,390 So here's a good source of weather information. 261 00:12:25,390 --> 00:12:27,400 So you can go to AviationWeather.gov 262 00:12:27,400 --> 00:12:31,100 and they have a bunch of menu options up there. 263 00:12:31,100 --> 00:12:36,130 So if you click on METAR right here, this METAR button, 264 00:12:36,130 --> 00:12:37,870 it will take you to a place where 265 00:12:37,870 --> 00:12:40,300 you can request the METAR data. 266 00:12:40,300 --> 00:12:44,680 And it asks for an ID, so that's the airport identifier. 267 00:12:44,680 --> 00:12:46,780 So in this case, I wrote in KBED which 268 00:12:46,780 --> 00:12:48,940 is Bedford airport, Hanscom field that we 269 00:12:48,940 --> 00:12:50,420 keep referring to. 270 00:12:50,420 --> 00:12:54,700 And then you can actually tell it to decode the data for you. 271 00:12:54,700 --> 00:12:56,800 So as much as you want to memorize 272 00:12:56,800 --> 00:13:00,340 all of these different codes and symbols, in general practice, 273 00:13:00,340 --> 00:13:03,100 you can hit decode it and it'll tell you that. 274 00:13:03,100 --> 00:13:06,100 You can look up at the time, so you can actually 275 00:13:06,100 --> 00:13:08,080 ask for weather data in the past. 276 00:13:08,080 --> 00:13:09,850 And you could include a TAF. 277 00:13:09,850 --> 00:13:10,990 What does TAF mean? 278 00:13:13,700 --> 00:13:14,526 Yes. 279 00:13:14,526 --> 00:13:15,520 AUDIENCE: Terminal area forecast. 280 00:13:15,520 --> 00:13:17,187 TINA SRIVASTAVA: Terminal area forecast. 281 00:13:17,187 --> 00:13:18,190 That's right. 282 00:13:18,190 --> 00:13:22,550 So if you do that and you hit Enter, it gives you this data. 283 00:13:22,550 --> 00:13:24,970 So first thing it does is it tells you 284 00:13:24,970 --> 00:13:28,570 the date at which it's producing the data for you. 285 00:13:28,570 --> 00:13:33,910 And then the first is the METAR and the second here is the TAF. 286 00:13:33,910 --> 00:13:36,535 And so the METAR here is telling you the location, 287 00:13:36,535 --> 00:13:38,380 so it starts with KBED. 288 00:13:38,380 --> 00:13:41,800 And then here is the information raw, 289 00:13:41,800 --> 00:13:46,150 so you see that data right here or you can have it decoded. 290 00:13:46,150 --> 00:13:48,370 So again, the first two numbers 23-- 291 00:13:48,370 --> 00:13:49,360 that's the date-- 292 00:13:49,360 --> 00:13:55,060 20 23rd, and then it gives you the time in Zulu. 293 00:13:55,060 --> 00:13:56,800 And then they basically go forward 294 00:13:56,800 --> 00:13:58,120 with all that information. 295 00:13:58,120 --> 00:14:01,180 So it it's defined it here because it's decoded, so you 296 00:14:01,180 --> 00:14:03,200 see the temperature, dew point. 297 00:14:03,200 --> 00:14:05,530 So I actually just updated this this morning 298 00:14:05,530 --> 00:14:10,000 so you could see the weather and what it's looking like. 299 00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:13,290 Now I'll go over to the Document Viewer for a moment. 300 00:14:29,090 --> 00:14:31,540 PHILIP GREENSPUN: Oh, probably don't want the light. 301 00:14:31,540 --> 00:14:33,170 Or maybe we probably need this. 302 00:14:38,040 --> 00:14:39,510 OK. 303 00:14:39,510 --> 00:14:43,290 Qualified personnel are here. 304 00:14:43,290 --> 00:14:44,180 I'll entertain you. 305 00:14:44,180 --> 00:14:46,110 That first METAR was from PDK. 306 00:14:46,110 --> 00:14:48,760 Anybody know where that is? 307 00:14:48,760 --> 00:14:51,390 KPDK. 308 00:14:51,390 --> 00:14:54,034 Southerners? 309 00:14:54,034 --> 00:14:54,760 AUDIENCE: DeKalb. 310 00:14:54,760 --> 00:14:56,010 PHILIP GREENSPUN: DeKalb, yes. 311 00:14:56,010 --> 00:14:57,480 Peachtree DeKalb in Atlanta. 312 00:14:57,480 --> 00:15:02,460 It's the Teterboro or Hanscom Field of Atlanta. 313 00:15:02,460 --> 00:15:06,150 I landed there once in a Diamond Star. 314 00:15:06,150 --> 00:15:09,480 I had to have the wings taken off in Florida 315 00:15:09,480 --> 00:15:11,250 to fix a fuel gauge. 316 00:15:11,250 --> 00:15:14,250 I took off from there and I filed a VFR flight 317 00:15:14,250 --> 00:15:17,100 plan, landed in DeKalb, and I forgot 318 00:15:17,100 --> 00:15:19,410 to close my VFR flight plan. 319 00:15:19,410 --> 00:15:23,430 So the FAA and flight service folks at the time, 320 00:15:23,430 --> 00:15:25,530 they start searching for me and calling everybody. 321 00:15:25,530 --> 00:15:28,710 And they called the tower at DeKalb and they said, hey, 322 00:15:28,710 --> 00:15:30,123 did you see 505 whiskey tango? 323 00:15:30,123 --> 00:15:32,040 And they said, no, we hadn't seen an airplane. 324 00:15:32,040 --> 00:15:34,890 And I really freaked out. 325 00:15:34,890 --> 00:15:37,630 And I was right there on the ramp. 326 00:15:37,630 --> 00:15:40,740 So I kept silencing my phone because I 327 00:15:40,740 --> 00:15:43,910 was at a barbecue place with my friend 328 00:15:43,910 --> 00:15:45,510 and didn't want to be disturbed. 329 00:15:45,510 --> 00:15:48,210 Anyway, so they called the mechanic who took the wings off 330 00:15:48,210 --> 00:15:51,780 and they told him like the aircraft was missing. 331 00:15:51,780 --> 00:15:54,640 He had some choice words for me. 332 00:15:54,640 --> 00:15:58,050 So now, whenever I activate a VFR flight plan usually, 333 00:15:58,050 --> 00:16:00,090 if I do a flight plan at all, its IFR. 334 00:16:00,090 --> 00:16:02,290 They close that for you automatically. 335 00:16:02,290 --> 00:16:05,095 I move my watch from my left wrist to my right 336 00:16:05,095 --> 00:16:06,720 as a reminder to close the flight plan. 337 00:16:06,720 --> 00:16:07,387 All right, Tina. 338 00:16:07,387 --> 00:16:09,780 Take it away. 339 00:16:09,780 --> 00:16:12,120 TINA SRIVASTAVA: So this is the ForeFlight app. 340 00:16:12,120 --> 00:16:14,550 I've passed the iPad around a couple times, 341 00:16:14,550 --> 00:16:16,840 so I think you guys have gotten to play with it. 342 00:16:16,840 --> 00:16:19,710 This is just a setting where the blue dot is showing where 343 00:16:19,710 --> 00:16:21,780 we currently are, and I've actually 344 00:16:21,780 --> 00:16:28,030 overlaid one of those instrument flight plans on top going here. 345 00:16:28,030 --> 00:16:31,920 So this is it an instrumented approach to Bedford. 346 00:16:31,920 --> 00:16:34,830 But if I wanted to get this weather data here, 347 00:16:34,830 --> 00:16:38,040 I can go to Airports and pull up the airport 348 00:16:38,040 --> 00:16:39,400 that I'm looking for. 349 00:16:39,400 --> 00:16:44,850 And then click on this Weather and it shows me the METAR. 350 00:16:44,850 --> 00:16:49,140 So it has both the raw data there and then it depicts it. 351 00:16:49,140 --> 00:16:52,530 And again, blue is showing marginal VFR, 352 00:16:52,530 --> 00:16:53,760 and so it explains that. 353 00:16:53,760 --> 00:16:57,990 What's also nice is it tells you the weather at nearby airports, 354 00:16:57,990 --> 00:16:59,500 as well. 355 00:16:59,500 --> 00:17:01,890 And then you can also go to your TAF, 356 00:17:01,890 --> 00:17:03,960 your terminal area forecast, and you 357 00:17:03,960 --> 00:17:06,880 can look at how that is changing over time. 358 00:17:10,935 --> 00:17:13,560 PHILIP GREENSPUN: Oh, Tina, you don't mind, click on MOS, also. 359 00:17:13,560 --> 00:17:15,190 Yeah, if you're planning travel, MOS 360 00:17:15,190 --> 00:17:17,881 is good because it gives you weather a few days in advance 361 00:17:17,881 --> 00:17:19,839 so you can decide whether or not it makes sense 362 00:17:19,839 --> 00:17:22,510 to depart here on Friday and hope 363 00:17:22,510 --> 00:17:24,930 to come back VFR on Sunday. 364 00:17:24,930 --> 00:17:27,369 TINA SRIVASTAVA: MOS is talking about the models, so 365 00:17:27,369 --> 00:17:30,832 the weather models and what the outputs are. 366 00:17:30,832 --> 00:17:33,040 PHILIP GREENSPUN: I think it stands for Model Outputs 367 00:17:33,040 --> 00:17:36,010 Statistics, not very helpful, but anyway, it's a longer-- 368 00:17:36,010 --> 00:17:38,230 ForeFlight and Garmin Pilot and some other sources, 369 00:17:38,230 --> 00:17:39,940 like WeatherSpork, will turn that 370 00:17:39,940 --> 00:17:43,060 into a sort of a virtual TAF for you 371 00:17:43,060 --> 00:17:47,250 that lasts three days instead of just 24 hours. 372 00:17:47,250 --> 00:17:49,377 30 for the big airports. 373 00:17:49,377 --> 00:17:51,460 TINA SRIVASTAVA: So another type of weather report 374 00:17:51,460 --> 00:17:54,100 is a PIREP or a pilot report. 375 00:17:54,100 --> 00:17:57,610 And so this is where a pilot could be flying 376 00:17:57,610 --> 00:18:00,340 and wants to report the condition, so for example, 377 00:18:00,340 --> 00:18:02,170 turbulence or icing. 378 00:18:02,170 --> 00:18:04,690 Those are types of things that are frequently 379 00:18:04,690 --> 00:18:06,610 reported by pilots. 380 00:18:06,610 --> 00:18:09,160 And you can actually report one, as well. 381 00:18:09,160 --> 00:18:12,850 So one time when you're getting your flight instruction, 382 00:18:12,850 --> 00:18:17,290 if you do notice a wind shear, turbulence, icing, 383 00:18:17,290 --> 00:18:21,430 try to see if you can actually provide your own PIREP. 384 00:18:21,430 --> 00:18:23,620 And it'll ask you certain information 385 00:18:23,620 --> 00:18:26,680 such as your location, the time, the altitude at which you 386 00:18:26,680 --> 00:18:29,290 experienced it, what type of aircraft. 387 00:18:29,290 --> 00:18:32,590 I think that's really relevant because, for example, 388 00:18:32,590 --> 00:18:37,150 wind shear experienced by a small Cessna is one thing. 389 00:18:37,150 --> 00:18:41,350 If a large aircraft, like a big jet, a JetBlue aircraft, 390 00:18:41,350 --> 00:18:43,180 is telling you that they have wind shear, 391 00:18:43,180 --> 00:18:44,530 I'd really pay attention. 392 00:18:44,530 --> 00:18:46,390 If they seem to have trouble with it, 393 00:18:46,390 --> 00:18:48,848 that means you're definitely going to have trouble with it. 394 00:18:51,430 --> 00:18:54,070 And then you could also have printed weather forecasts 395 00:18:54,070 --> 00:18:56,110 that tell you-- so we just talked about the TAF 396 00:18:56,110 --> 00:18:57,760 as an example. 397 00:18:57,760 --> 00:19:02,920 And as Philip was just saying, it only goes out 24 hours. 398 00:19:02,920 --> 00:19:07,005 So same type of information as a METAR 399 00:19:07,005 --> 00:19:09,990 and similar abbreviations. 400 00:19:09,990 --> 00:19:14,260 And then we were just talking about that those models, 401 00:19:14,260 --> 00:19:19,440 and so you can forecast even farther out if need be. 402 00:19:19,440 --> 00:19:22,440 You can also get a forecast for a general area. 403 00:19:22,440 --> 00:19:24,740 So this is what we were discussing earlier 404 00:19:24,740 --> 00:19:26,210 when we were talking about radios 405 00:19:26,210 --> 00:19:30,975 and you might want to call in and ask for a weather forecast 406 00:19:30,975 --> 00:19:33,500 or weather brief for a given flight plan. 407 00:19:33,500 --> 00:19:36,263 We talked about how you'd call in, give your tail number, 408 00:19:36,263 --> 00:19:38,180 where you were starting, where you were going, 409 00:19:38,180 --> 00:19:42,020 about how much time is out you'd be en route or in flight. 410 00:19:42,020 --> 00:19:43,790 And then, they might tell you the weather 411 00:19:43,790 --> 00:19:48,570 for the general area as well as the local current readings 412 00:19:48,570 --> 00:19:50,378 as well as the forecasts. 413 00:19:50,378 --> 00:19:52,670 PHILIP GREENSPUN: And notice that these area forecasts, 414 00:19:52,670 --> 00:19:54,950 if you go to the page on AviationWeather.gov, 415 00:19:54,950 --> 00:19:57,680 they're now only available for two or three regions, 416 00:19:57,680 --> 00:19:59,190 like the Gulf of Mexico. 417 00:19:59,190 --> 00:20:02,780 They used to have them for all over the continental US 418 00:20:02,780 --> 00:20:05,580 and they included cloud tops, which was very useful. 419 00:20:05,580 --> 00:20:07,640 The forecast top of the cloud because if it 420 00:20:07,640 --> 00:20:10,590 was, say, 4,000 feet, you would know that 421 00:20:10,590 --> 00:20:12,410 as long as you get on top of those IFR, 422 00:20:12,410 --> 00:20:15,020 you're not going to pick up any ice because you'll 423 00:20:15,020 --> 00:20:16,010 be above the clouds. 424 00:20:16,010 --> 00:20:20,900 And now you have to try to tease that out of the MOS data 425 00:20:20,900 --> 00:20:22,970 sources or use something like WeatherSpork 426 00:20:22,970 --> 00:20:26,520 that tries to depict graphically where the clouds are. 427 00:20:26,520 --> 00:20:28,372 I think ForeFlight's Profile View will also 428 00:20:28,372 --> 00:20:29,330 try to do some of that. 429 00:20:33,192 --> 00:20:35,650 TINA SRIVASTAVA: You can also get forecasts of winds aloft. 430 00:20:35,650 --> 00:20:37,480 We talked about that a couple times. 431 00:20:37,480 --> 00:20:40,660 And so this will tell you kind of what the winds are going 432 00:20:40,660 --> 00:20:43,660 to be at a particular altitude, for example, 433 00:20:43,660 --> 00:20:47,470 at 3,000 feet or 6,000 feet, and so it 434 00:20:47,470 --> 00:20:49,990 helps you estimate especially in a cross-country flight 435 00:20:49,990 --> 00:20:51,880 or a longer flight how long it might 436 00:20:51,880 --> 00:20:53,890 take for you to get there. 437 00:20:53,890 --> 00:20:56,740 On apps, such as ForeFlight, if you-- 438 00:20:56,740 --> 00:20:59,980 in fact, we'll just do that right now so you can see. 439 00:21:13,880 --> 00:21:17,330 So you can actually enter in a flight plan 440 00:21:17,330 --> 00:21:21,710 very quickly, so you can have a starting place. 441 00:21:21,710 --> 00:21:34,713 And then-- so where do you guys want to fly to? 442 00:21:34,713 --> 00:21:36,597 AUDIENCE: Boston Logan. 443 00:21:36,597 --> 00:21:38,930 TINA SRIVASTAVA: That's a pretty short flight, but sure. 444 00:21:46,423 --> 00:21:48,590 PHILIP GREENSPUN: You guys, if you have the patience 445 00:21:48,590 --> 00:21:51,500 to stay with us tomorrow afternoon starting at 3:00, 446 00:21:51,500 --> 00:21:53,930 the founder of ForeFlight's going to be here, 447 00:21:53,930 --> 00:21:57,008 and I'm sure you'll get a pretty thorough demo. 448 00:21:57,008 --> 00:21:59,300 He and a colleague are going to talk for a couple hours 449 00:21:59,300 --> 00:22:02,360 about first the app, and also the startup, 450 00:22:02,360 --> 00:22:05,128 and then some of the engineering behind it. 451 00:22:05,128 --> 00:22:06,920 TINA SRIVASTAVA: So the blue dot is showing 452 00:22:06,920 --> 00:22:08,960 where we are here at MIT. 453 00:22:08,960 --> 00:22:10,430 But of course, generally, you'd be 454 00:22:10,430 --> 00:22:12,350 doing this when you're at Bedford 455 00:22:12,350 --> 00:22:15,770 and you're flying to Logan. 456 00:22:15,770 --> 00:22:18,650 And then here, it's telling you it 457 00:22:18,650 --> 00:22:21,380 wants to know about the aircraft that I'll 458 00:22:21,380 --> 00:22:25,910 be flying in order to calculate some of the information. 459 00:22:25,910 --> 00:22:28,910 But when you do these types of things with the flight, 460 00:22:28,910 --> 00:22:33,380 it can estimate kind of how long you'll be in flight. 461 00:22:33,380 --> 00:22:38,000 And you can provide what is the altitude at which you 462 00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:39,180 want to fly. 463 00:22:39,180 --> 00:22:41,960 And then it will be able to-- 464 00:22:41,960 --> 00:22:44,260 so it says coloring based on winds aloft. 465 00:22:44,260 --> 00:22:46,580 It looks like it's not detecting that maybe because I 466 00:22:46,580 --> 00:22:49,070 haven't given it all of its data right now. 467 00:22:49,070 --> 00:22:54,170 So in terms of what that means is just that the winds aloft 468 00:22:54,170 --> 00:22:56,180 are a good way of helping you predict 469 00:22:56,180 --> 00:22:58,580 how long it's going to take you to get to certain places. 470 00:22:58,580 --> 00:23:00,980 And it'll be part of that cross-country planning 471 00:23:00,980 --> 00:23:01,945 that you'll have to do. 472 00:23:01,945 --> 00:23:03,320 PHILIP GREENSPUN: The winds aloft 473 00:23:03,320 --> 00:23:07,430 forecast also shows you the temperature, which is critical 474 00:23:07,430 --> 00:23:09,920 because that's going to tell you whether icing is-- 475 00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:13,657 icing is not possible if it's above freezing, generally. 476 00:23:15,475 --> 00:23:17,100 TINA SRIVASTAVA: There are also a bunch 477 00:23:17,100 --> 00:23:18,643 of severe weather reports. 478 00:23:18,643 --> 00:23:20,310 Philip has already talked about a number 479 00:23:20,310 --> 00:23:25,660 of them, AIRMETs and SIGMETs, as he was talking about. 480 00:23:25,660 --> 00:23:29,610 And then they have different abbreviations, even more 481 00:23:29,610 --> 00:23:31,500 abbreviations, related to this. 482 00:23:31,500 --> 00:23:34,740 So what they mean for icing and turbulence. 483 00:23:34,740 --> 00:23:38,400 So here we'll look at some examples of an AIRMET. 484 00:23:38,400 --> 00:23:41,580 And in the picture, it shows a broad area 485 00:23:41,580 --> 00:23:43,570 where that AIRMET is valid. 486 00:23:43,570 --> 00:23:47,520 And so this is talking about icing and freezing level. 487 00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:51,630 So SIGMETs also talk about hazardous weather 488 00:23:51,630 --> 00:23:56,160 such as icing, turbulence, volcanic ash, which 489 00:23:56,160 --> 00:23:58,830 I don't think you'll encounter very often, 490 00:23:58,830 --> 00:24:02,220 but it was an issue in Europe, for example. 491 00:24:02,220 --> 00:24:04,680 And then here's a breakdown of decoding 492 00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:07,410 a SIGMET, as an example, to show you 493 00:24:07,410 --> 00:24:11,460 the type of information, what it stands for, 494 00:24:11,460 --> 00:24:14,400 and you can read through these to understand 495 00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:15,935 the adverse weather. 496 00:24:15,935 --> 00:24:17,310 And certainly, if you're planning 497 00:24:17,310 --> 00:24:19,800 your own cross-country flight, I recommend 498 00:24:19,800 --> 00:24:23,160 you also use your normal weather data sources, as well. 499 00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:26,160 So just turn on the Weather Channel or Weather.com or Accu 500 00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:29,380 Weather, whatever you use on a regular basis. 501 00:24:29,380 --> 00:24:31,590 If it's a crummy day, it's probably not a good day 502 00:24:31,590 --> 00:24:33,480 to go flying anyway and you may not 503 00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:37,630 want to dive so deep into all of these different tools. 504 00:24:37,630 --> 00:24:40,770 But if it seems like a nice day, then I 505 00:24:40,770 --> 00:24:43,080 would really recommend diving more specifically 506 00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:45,143 into understanding if there's a front coming in 507 00:24:45,143 --> 00:24:46,185 or other types of issues. 508 00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:52,280 And then, convective SIGMETs are really, really concerning. 509 00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:54,710 So there are things that are much more severe, so you're 510 00:24:54,710 --> 00:24:56,900 talking about thunderstorms, hail, 511 00:24:56,900 --> 00:24:58,340 some things you really don't want 512 00:24:58,340 --> 00:24:59,680 to be flying during at all. 513 00:25:02,710 --> 00:25:05,250 There's a lot of different ways that the weather is also 514 00:25:05,250 --> 00:25:08,710 produced not in a text form but in a graphical format. 515 00:25:08,710 --> 00:25:12,600 So this is a relatively complicated weather depiction 516 00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:13,140 chart. 517 00:25:13,140 --> 00:25:15,398 So we'll break it down in detail. 518 00:25:15,398 --> 00:25:17,440 But let me just tell you some of the main things. 519 00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:18,350 Do you have the-- 520 00:25:18,350 --> 00:25:20,950 oh, I left it over there. 521 00:25:20,950 --> 00:25:23,510 Thanks, Phillip. 522 00:25:23,510 --> 00:25:27,140 So can anyone guess what all the little circles are? 523 00:25:27,140 --> 00:25:28,910 We see some circles that are white 524 00:25:28,910 --> 00:25:30,260 and some circles that are black. 525 00:25:30,260 --> 00:25:31,593 Does anyone know what those are? 526 00:25:38,170 --> 00:25:39,715 Any guesses? 527 00:25:39,715 --> 00:25:40,840 AUDIENCE: Weather stations? 528 00:25:40,840 --> 00:25:42,610 TINA SRIVASTAVA: Weather stations? 529 00:25:42,610 --> 00:25:43,450 Good guess. 530 00:25:43,450 --> 00:25:45,220 So it's actually trying to tell you 531 00:25:45,220 --> 00:25:47,770 what the cloud cover is like. 532 00:25:47,770 --> 00:25:55,590 So you can see certain places where the circle is empty. 533 00:25:55,590 --> 00:26:00,580 It's a clear day when it's fully filled in, 534 00:26:00,580 --> 00:26:02,020 that it's showing the cloud cover. 535 00:26:02,020 --> 00:26:04,490 And then you see some that are like little pie chart, 536 00:26:04,490 --> 00:26:06,400 so that they're partially filled in. 537 00:26:10,060 --> 00:26:13,710 So the purpose of looking at a weather chart like that 538 00:26:13,710 --> 00:26:15,963 is just to get the general conditions. 539 00:26:15,963 --> 00:26:17,380 There's a lot of different things. 540 00:26:17,380 --> 00:26:20,280 So here, it's more specific so it breaks down 541 00:26:20,280 --> 00:26:22,750 that the circles indicate the percent cloud cover. 542 00:26:22,750 --> 00:26:25,080 So if it's a quarter filled, it saying few clouds. 543 00:26:25,080 --> 00:26:28,670 If it's 3/4 filled, it's broken. 544 00:26:28,670 --> 00:26:30,720 And then it also has shaded areas 545 00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:36,910 that depict when you have the IFR conditions. 546 00:26:36,910 --> 00:26:38,800 So zooming in, you can just kind of 547 00:26:38,800 --> 00:26:41,380 see those circles a little bit bigger, 548 00:26:41,380 --> 00:26:44,235 and the charts provide a lot of information, as well. 549 00:26:44,235 --> 00:26:45,610 But you can see a little bit more 550 00:26:45,610 --> 00:26:48,820 clearly also here some of the circles that 551 00:26:48,820 --> 00:26:50,770 are like pie charts that's showing 552 00:26:50,770 --> 00:26:54,100 how much they're filled in and what the cloud cover is looking 553 00:26:54,100 --> 00:26:55,030 like. 554 00:26:55,030 --> 00:26:58,150 And again, you can actually get the same type of thing 555 00:26:58,150 --> 00:26:59,800 on your ForeFlight. 556 00:26:59,800 --> 00:27:01,300 It's basically an option. 557 00:27:01,300 --> 00:27:02,890 For every airport that it depicts, 558 00:27:02,890 --> 00:27:06,720 it can show this cloud cover, as well. 559 00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:10,030 And you can also look at a radar summary chart. 560 00:27:10,030 --> 00:27:11,970 There are a bunch of prog charts, 561 00:27:11,970 --> 00:27:15,943 so they talk about when you're looking at a front. 562 00:27:15,943 --> 00:27:17,610 You guys have seen a lot of these things 563 00:27:17,610 --> 00:27:21,120 on the Weather Channel, probably didn't pay attention to them 564 00:27:21,120 --> 00:27:23,160 very much, but it's good to understand 565 00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:24,810 what the different types of fronts are, 566 00:27:24,810 --> 00:27:28,560 what's happening across the country, more than just 567 00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:29,670 your particular region. 568 00:27:29,670 --> 00:27:31,420 So if you're planning you know if it's a-- 569 00:27:31,420 --> 00:27:34,860 I think today's a Wednesday, so if you're planning on a flight 570 00:27:34,860 --> 00:27:36,450 this upcoming weekend and you want 571 00:27:36,450 --> 00:27:38,033 to think about what's going to happen, 572 00:27:38,033 --> 00:27:39,742 basically, you're trying to see are there 573 00:27:39,742 --> 00:27:40,890 some fronts coming in? 574 00:27:40,890 --> 00:27:41,640 What's happening? 575 00:27:41,640 --> 00:27:45,090 Or is it likely to going to be a clear day? 576 00:27:45,090 --> 00:27:47,490 And then, of course, as we've talked about, all of these 577 00:27:47,490 --> 00:27:50,340 have good legends just like we talked 578 00:27:50,340 --> 00:27:53,670 about the sectional chart quite a bit 579 00:27:53,670 --> 00:27:55,200 and the details of the legend. 580 00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:57,300 It's always good to take a look at how 581 00:27:57,300 --> 00:27:59,970 they have indicated these different lines, where 582 00:27:59,970 --> 00:28:00,960 the fronts are. 583 00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:03,270 And you really want to know which ones, again, 584 00:28:03,270 --> 00:28:05,520 are reporting the actual conditions versus which 585 00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:09,210 is a guesstimate of what's going to happen in six hours, 12 586 00:28:09,210 --> 00:28:10,410 hours from now. 587 00:28:10,410 --> 00:28:13,080 Again, if it's a forecast, it could be wrong. 588 00:28:15,583 --> 00:28:17,500 And then this is just a little bit more detail 589 00:28:17,500 --> 00:28:19,880 of types of things you can see on a chart. 590 00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:21,890 I think the most important thing to look at 591 00:28:21,890 --> 00:28:25,460 is this weird little R symbol with kind 592 00:28:25,460 --> 00:28:26,980 of an arrow at the bottom. 593 00:28:26,980 --> 00:28:29,720 It's indicating thunder. 594 00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:32,120 So that's a big one to look out for. 595 00:28:32,120 --> 00:28:34,430 If you see that, it's probably not something 596 00:28:34,430 --> 00:28:35,810 you're interested in flying in. 597 00:28:35,810 --> 00:28:36,790 I'm not, for sure. 598 00:28:40,148 --> 00:28:41,940 And then, there are a couple of shards here 599 00:28:41,940 --> 00:28:44,550 that are not specifically on the-- 600 00:28:44,550 --> 00:28:47,010 usually going to be asked about, but it's good to see. 601 00:28:47,010 --> 00:28:49,510 So you might have seen these kind of surface analysis 602 00:28:49,510 --> 00:28:50,010 charts. 603 00:28:50,010 --> 00:28:52,890 And they talk about high pressure areas and low pressure 604 00:28:52,890 --> 00:28:53,760 areas. 605 00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:55,737 And so that high and low pressure, 606 00:28:55,737 --> 00:28:56,820 what are we talking about? 607 00:28:56,820 --> 00:29:00,060 So that's the same thing is that pressure that you're dialing 608 00:29:00,060 --> 00:29:01,720 into your altimeter, right? 609 00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:05,910 So we talked about 29.92, but there 610 00:29:05,910 --> 00:29:08,400 might be a day where it's really dropped very low 611 00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:11,640 and it's 28 or something very, very low. 612 00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:13,590 That means you're in a low pressure area. 613 00:29:13,590 --> 00:29:17,470 And if it's very high, you're at 30 point something, 614 00:29:17,470 --> 00:29:19,470 it's a higher pressure area. 615 00:29:19,470 --> 00:29:21,660 And if you see that as you're flying around 616 00:29:21,660 --> 00:29:25,500 that pressure setting is getting updated very rapidly 617 00:29:25,500 --> 00:29:27,450 and changing rapidly, that usually 618 00:29:27,450 --> 00:29:30,550 is related to a change in your overall weather system. 619 00:29:30,550 --> 00:29:32,790 So you really want to be aware if that number is 620 00:29:32,790 --> 00:29:36,150 changing quite a bit, that's a big problem. 621 00:29:36,150 --> 00:29:38,640 You can also take a look at when you get into your airplane 622 00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:40,290 and you're first setting that dial 623 00:29:40,290 --> 00:29:41,790 when you're sitting on the ground, 624 00:29:41,790 --> 00:29:44,743 see how much it's changing. 625 00:29:44,743 --> 00:29:47,160 You might want to-- in general, when you get into a plane, 626 00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,448 I like to think about when the plane was last flown. 627 00:29:50,448 --> 00:29:52,740 There are parts where you are checking the oil that you 628 00:29:52,740 --> 00:29:54,870 can kind of generally feel the engine 629 00:29:54,870 --> 00:29:57,450 and see if it's warm or not, if it needs to be primed or not, 630 00:29:57,450 --> 00:29:58,710 those types of things. 631 00:29:58,710 --> 00:30:01,020 If you see that the plane has just been flown 632 00:30:01,020 --> 00:30:04,110 and you're really dramatically having to change that pressure 633 00:30:04,110 --> 00:30:06,180 setting, that means the weather has recently 634 00:30:06,180 --> 00:30:07,278 changed quite a bit. 635 00:30:07,278 --> 00:30:08,820 It makes you want to really make sure 636 00:30:08,820 --> 00:30:11,790 that your projections and your knowledge about the weather 637 00:30:11,790 --> 00:30:12,540 is still accurate. 638 00:30:12,540 --> 00:30:15,123 PHILIP GREENSPUN: Tina, you want to mention these numbers here 639 00:30:15,123 --> 00:30:16,910 are the metric equivalent. 640 00:30:16,910 --> 00:30:25,095 So instead of 2 99 and 2, you'll see 1,000 millibars or so. 641 00:30:25,095 --> 00:30:26,970 TINA SRIVASTAVA: So we have a bunch of these. 642 00:30:26,970 --> 00:30:29,230 And all of these are also on that first website, 643 00:30:29,230 --> 00:30:31,075 the AviationWeather.gov. 644 00:30:31,075 --> 00:30:34,570 You can look at actually seeing the clouds 645 00:30:34,570 --> 00:30:37,130 from a satellite picture and kind of just seeing 646 00:30:37,130 --> 00:30:38,530 what's going on. 647 00:30:38,530 --> 00:30:40,540 These are hopefully not the first time 648 00:30:40,540 --> 00:30:44,140 you've seen these types of charts before. 649 00:30:44,140 --> 00:30:48,940 And then this is a way that they like to depict the winds aloft. 650 00:30:48,940 --> 00:30:51,090 So these little lines, and then depending 651 00:30:51,090 --> 00:30:54,870 on how many lines are coming off the side, 652 00:30:54,870 --> 00:31:00,190 it indicates how strong that wind is and what the amount is. 653 00:31:00,190 --> 00:31:01,740 So you can see here some that have 654 00:31:01,740 --> 00:31:03,450 a lot of little dashes coming off 655 00:31:03,450 --> 00:31:05,940 of it, whereas some that don't have any. 656 00:31:05,940 --> 00:31:09,720 It's a way to very quickly see where the wind is very strong 657 00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:12,240 and where it's not. 658 00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:14,450 And this is what I had talked about last time when 659 00:31:14,450 --> 00:31:18,710 we're in the radio section, the radio ATC and communications 660 00:31:18,710 --> 00:31:19,520 section. 661 00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:22,790 But just as a reminder, this is the number that you can call 662 00:31:22,790 --> 00:31:25,287 and you can get your full weather briefing done there. 663 00:31:25,287 --> 00:31:27,620 PHILIP GREENSPUN: Tina, do you want me to take over now? 664 00:31:27,620 --> 00:31:29,273 TINA SRIVASTAVA: Sure. 665 00:31:29,273 --> 00:31:30,440 PHILIP GREENSPUN: All right. 666 00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:32,840 So thank you. 667 00:31:32,840 --> 00:31:36,260 Tina covered the stuff that requires a brain. 668 00:31:36,260 --> 00:31:41,090 Now, I'm going to just tell you about how do you get this stuff 669 00:31:41,090 --> 00:31:42,817 as a practical matter. 670 00:31:42,817 --> 00:31:44,900 You can call this phone number it's very good when 671 00:31:44,900 --> 00:31:47,900 you're a novice pilot. 672 00:31:47,900 --> 00:31:50,330 Again, think about crew resource management. 673 00:31:50,330 --> 00:31:54,290 The weather briefers are another person that you can pull in. 674 00:31:54,290 --> 00:31:56,225 They may say VFR flight not recommended. 675 00:31:56,225 --> 00:31:57,350 That's there at the bottom. 676 00:31:57,350 --> 00:31:58,725 That's worth paying attention to. 677 00:32:01,620 --> 00:32:03,540 They used to work for the FAA. 678 00:32:03,540 --> 00:32:05,750 They were outsourced in 2005, and now they're 679 00:32:05,750 --> 00:32:08,300 contractors from a company called Leidos, 680 00:32:08,300 --> 00:32:10,615 so you might hear the name Leidos. 681 00:32:10,615 --> 00:32:12,740 You can get a full weather briefing over the phone. 682 00:32:12,740 --> 00:32:17,270 I actually do this sometimes if I'm in an Uber on my way 683 00:32:17,270 --> 00:32:18,470 to the Gaithersburg airport. 684 00:32:18,470 --> 00:32:20,840 I'll just call the weather briefer 685 00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:23,520 and that makes life very easy. 686 00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:24,020 OK. 687 00:32:24,020 --> 00:32:27,720 So AviationWeather.gov, as we mentioned earlier, 688 00:32:27,720 --> 00:32:31,160 has all the chart that we saw. 689 00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:32,630 The weather briefers themselves run 690 00:32:32,630 --> 00:32:36,050 their own website, which is a little bit of a twist on that. 691 00:32:36,050 --> 00:32:38,060 I kind of like this site, actually, 692 00:32:38,060 --> 00:32:40,008 because you get to set up a home page where 693 00:32:40,008 --> 00:32:41,300 you pick your favorite airport. 694 00:32:41,300 --> 00:32:44,000 So I picked Bedford, Teterboro which 695 00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:48,230 is where you go in the New York Metro area 696 00:32:48,230 --> 00:32:53,150 if you enjoy paying $8 or $9 a gallon for gasoline. 697 00:32:53,150 --> 00:32:58,430 And then Dulles Airport where the two competing FBO's also 698 00:32:58,430 --> 00:33:00,935 charge about $9 a gallon for gasoline. 699 00:33:00,935 --> 00:33:02,870 But anyway, they'll have the METARs 700 00:33:02,870 --> 00:33:06,230 for your favorite airports and the TAFs and all this, 701 00:33:06,230 --> 00:33:07,640 and you can set up these charts. 702 00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:09,872 So basically, as soon as you log in, 703 00:33:09,872 --> 00:33:12,080 you get a whole bunch of current weather information. 704 00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:14,780 That's kind of a nice feature for this website. 705 00:33:14,780 --> 00:33:16,100 And it is free. 706 00:33:16,100 --> 00:33:20,780 They will give you, just like AviationWeather.gov, they'll 707 00:33:20,780 --> 00:33:21,710 give you the METAR. 708 00:33:21,710 --> 00:33:23,990 Here's one for Bedford from the other day. 709 00:33:23,990 --> 00:33:25,390 I guess that's from the 21st. 710 00:33:25,390 --> 00:33:26,230 Yeah. 711 00:33:26,230 --> 00:33:28,490 The wind was 310. 712 00:33:28,490 --> 00:33:35,060 So it was on the 21st at 0256 Zulu, so it was late at night, 713 00:33:35,060 --> 00:33:36,530 early in the morning in London. 714 00:33:36,530 --> 00:33:40,930 Wind was 310 at 18 knots, gusting 25, 715 00:33:40,930 --> 00:33:43,400 10 miles of visibility, clear. 716 00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:45,860 Temperature was minus 11, dew point 717 00:33:45,860 --> 00:33:49,725 minus one niner, altimeter two niner, four seven, 718 00:33:49,725 --> 00:33:50,600 and there's a remark. 719 00:33:50,600 --> 00:33:56,750 The peak wind was 310 at 31 knots and that happened at 0225 720 00:33:56,750 --> 00:33:58,960 Zulu time. 721 00:33:58,960 --> 00:33:59,460 OK. 722 00:33:59,460 --> 00:34:01,370 There are private websites. 723 00:34:01,370 --> 00:34:04,850 The most popular free one is probably fltplan.com at least 724 00:34:04,850 --> 00:34:06,280 among the turbine crowd. 725 00:34:06,280 --> 00:34:10,850 They have very accurate models for a lot of jet powered 726 00:34:10,850 --> 00:34:12,860 or turboprop aircraft. 727 00:34:12,860 --> 00:34:14,989 And they have some example briefings 728 00:34:14,989 --> 00:34:16,610 that I think I do want to show you. 729 00:34:24,770 --> 00:34:26,639 OK. 730 00:34:26,639 --> 00:34:28,719 Again, you'll have access to this. 731 00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:31,318 So one nice thing about fltplan.com 732 00:34:31,318 --> 00:34:34,260 is they start you off with a nav log. 733 00:34:34,260 --> 00:34:37,620 Remember, we talked about that? 734 00:34:37,620 --> 00:34:40,739 And in the nav log, they tell you 735 00:34:40,739 --> 00:34:46,219 what magnetic course to steer. 736 00:34:46,219 --> 00:34:46,719 Oh, sorry. 737 00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:49,010 They give you the magnetic course? 738 00:34:49,010 --> 00:34:50,590 Sorry, magnetic course is 303. 739 00:34:50,590 --> 00:34:53,440 I guess they don't give you the wind correction angle, or maybe 740 00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:55,150 the wind's right in our faces. 741 00:34:55,150 --> 00:34:57,030 No, it's not. 742 00:34:57,030 --> 00:34:59,610 Maybe this is not such a great site. 743 00:34:59,610 --> 00:35:00,150 All right. 744 00:35:00,150 --> 00:35:02,150 Well anyway, they tell you roughly how long it's 745 00:35:02,150 --> 00:35:04,680 going to take you to get there. 746 00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:07,980 And they will calculate your ground speed for you. 747 00:35:07,980 --> 00:35:11,010 So I think I put in the Piper Warrior or something, 748 00:35:11,010 --> 00:35:15,810 so this is a pretty low airspeed, 124 knots. 749 00:35:15,810 --> 00:35:22,423 And you can see at the different altitudes 750 00:35:22,423 --> 00:35:23,840 how much fuel you're going to burn 751 00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:25,340 and how long it's going to take you. 752 00:35:25,340 --> 00:35:27,480 So there's really not a lot of difference. 753 00:35:27,480 --> 00:35:31,550 You can see here, you could go at 10,000 feet 754 00:35:31,550 --> 00:35:33,260 and take 58 minutes. 755 00:35:33,260 --> 00:35:36,080 You could go at 4,500 feet and it would take you an hour. 756 00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:38,390 So there's not a lot to choose from. 757 00:35:38,390 --> 00:35:41,120 Your airspeed goes up a little bit as you climb higher, 758 00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:43,655 but the wind is also a little bit stronger. 759 00:35:46,860 --> 00:35:49,380 They're giving you the weather to go from Bedford 760 00:35:49,380 --> 00:35:51,330 to Bennington, Vermont. 761 00:35:51,330 --> 00:35:54,540 Giving you a little bit of information about the runways. 762 00:35:54,540 --> 00:35:58,380 You can look at the approaches there. 763 00:35:58,380 --> 00:36:03,940 Departure airport forecast, so look at this. 764 00:36:03,940 --> 00:36:07,450 Departure airport NOTAM, so they did a pretty good job here. 765 00:36:07,450 --> 00:36:09,880 They pulled out the most important NOTAM. 766 00:36:09,880 --> 00:36:11,530 They were doing snow clearing. 767 00:36:11,530 --> 00:36:13,990 So at Bedford, they said, look, runway 112 niner 768 00:36:13,990 --> 00:36:17,230 is closed except with one hour of prior permission 769 00:36:17,230 --> 00:36:19,180 to this phone number. 770 00:36:19,180 --> 00:36:20,590 Now how about that? 771 00:36:20,590 --> 00:36:21,940 Look at all those other NOTAMs. 772 00:36:21,940 --> 00:36:23,830 You can really get lost because they're 773 00:36:23,830 --> 00:36:26,230 telling you about stuff-- 774 00:36:26,230 --> 00:36:32,570 taxiway-- Let's go here. 775 00:36:32,570 --> 00:36:37,640 Taxiway November edge markings obscured maybe by this snow. 776 00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:38,720 I don't know why. 777 00:36:38,720 --> 00:36:41,030 Anyway, that's probably not really important. 778 00:36:41,030 --> 00:36:44,750 That maybe is taxiway that you're not even going to use. 779 00:36:44,750 --> 00:36:48,410 So this is actually a pretty good computer program, I think, 780 00:36:48,410 --> 00:36:50,758 because they put that closed runway NOTAM right up 781 00:36:50,758 --> 00:36:52,550 at the top where you might actually see it, 782 00:36:52,550 --> 00:36:54,490 and they put it in boldface. 783 00:36:54,490 --> 00:36:58,350 Anyway, so that's a fltplan.com weather briefing. 784 00:36:58,350 --> 00:37:01,475 Let's see how ForeFlight presents the same information. 785 00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:08,600 You saw that before. 786 00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:11,970 They also give you this wind temperature and turbulence. 787 00:37:11,970 --> 00:37:13,640 Oh, this is to a different spot. 788 00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:15,269 This is to Gaithersburg. 789 00:37:20,160 --> 00:37:23,790 Significant weather from flight level 250 to 630. 790 00:37:23,790 --> 00:37:27,400 Not going to be able to use that in the Cirrus, unfortunately. 791 00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:29,830 That's up above 25,000 feet. 792 00:37:29,830 --> 00:37:31,030 We get the METARs. 793 00:37:31,030 --> 00:37:34,070 It looks like, sorry, the METARs and TAFs. 794 00:37:34,070 --> 00:37:36,940 So we get our METAR for Hanscom and it 795 00:37:36,940 --> 00:37:40,750 looks like they put in boldface the relevant portion 796 00:37:40,750 --> 00:37:41,500 of the TAF. 797 00:37:41,500 --> 00:37:43,900 So they're saying, look, at your flight time, 798 00:37:43,900 --> 00:37:45,693 this is the one that's going to apply. 799 00:37:45,693 --> 00:37:47,860 It's going to be better than six miles of visibility 800 00:37:47,860 --> 00:37:52,990 but overcast at 800, so not a bad IFR situation as long 801 00:37:52,990 --> 00:37:55,780 as you can handle any icing. 802 00:37:55,780 --> 00:37:58,470 They've color coded a bunch of stuff. 803 00:37:58,470 --> 00:38:02,115 So you can see here at Worcester, they've got-- 804 00:38:02,115 --> 00:38:03,600 well, that looks pretty nasty. 805 00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:11,270 They're forecasting, for example, wind 030 at 11 knots, 806 00:38:11,270 --> 00:38:14,400 only half a mile of visibility. 807 00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:15,260 Tina, help me out. 808 00:38:15,260 --> 00:38:17,040 What's minus PL? 809 00:38:17,040 --> 00:38:18,950 Freezing fog. 810 00:38:18,950 --> 00:38:21,210 I don't know what minus PL is, but it sounds bad. 811 00:38:21,210 --> 00:38:22,037 Overcast 500. 812 00:38:22,037 --> 00:38:23,370 So they're calling that low IFR. 813 00:38:31,410 --> 00:38:32,540 Where are the NOTAMs? 814 00:38:32,540 --> 00:38:34,248 Let me see what they did with the NOTAMs. 815 00:38:34,248 --> 00:38:37,180 I think it was the same day. 816 00:38:37,180 --> 00:38:38,170 Ice pellets. 817 00:38:38,170 --> 00:38:39,130 OK. 818 00:38:39,130 --> 00:38:41,960 Well, we don't want that. 819 00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:43,480 So this is an interesting thing. 820 00:38:43,480 --> 00:38:44,800 ForeFlight kind of missed-- 821 00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:49,910 I think it was out there, maybe it's here. 822 00:38:49,910 --> 00:38:50,410 OK. 823 00:38:50,410 --> 00:38:53,908 So up at the top, it says runway 523 is closed, 824 00:38:53,908 --> 00:38:56,200 which normally wouldn't bother me at all because that's 825 00:38:56,200 --> 00:38:57,783 the crosswind runway and we don't like 826 00:38:57,783 --> 00:38:59,560 to use it unless we have to. 827 00:39:02,610 --> 00:39:06,210 Maybe that NOTAM was not out at the time that I got this one. 828 00:39:10,730 --> 00:39:13,080 Yeah, there's nothing about that PPR. 829 00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:16,680 I guess they hadn't started plowing the snow at that time. 830 00:39:16,680 --> 00:39:18,960 Anyway, so the NOTAMs are important. 831 00:39:18,960 --> 00:39:21,300 They can tell you if the airport is 832 00:39:21,300 --> 00:39:24,450 having some kind of construction going on. 833 00:39:24,450 --> 00:39:30,180 Mobile apps-- ForeFlight is for the iPhone or iPad only. 834 00:39:30,180 --> 00:39:32,850 That's a major difference between ForeFlight and Garmin 835 00:39:32,850 --> 00:39:33,840 Pilot. 836 00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:35,840 NavMonster is a fun, free app. 837 00:39:35,840 --> 00:39:39,160 It works at least on iOS, I think on Android, as well. 838 00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:40,860 That gives you a lot of good stuff. 839 00:39:40,860 --> 00:39:45,197 WeatherSpork is all three platforms. 840 00:39:45,197 --> 00:39:47,280 So we're just going to show you ForeFlight in case 841 00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:52,710 you're not able to come to the talk tomorrow starting at 3:00. 842 00:39:52,710 --> 00:39:56,310 Here's a little flavor of ForeFlight. 843 00:39:56,310 --> 00:39:58,890 Notice that in the airport information 844 00:39:58,890 --> 00:40:01,860 page here on the left, they highlight the fact 845 00:40:01,860 --> 00:40:04,410 that runway 523 is closed by NOTAM, 846 00:40:04,410 --> 00:40:06,300 so they're making an attempt to pull out 847 00:40:06,300 --> 00:40:07,840 the most significant runways. 848 00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:09,090 But actually, they missed one. 849 00:40:09,090 --> 00:40:10,710 Look at this. 850 00:40:10,710 --> 00:40:13,950 Runway 112 niner is also closed except for this one hour 851 00:40:13,950 --> 00:40:15,150 prior permission. 852 00:40:15,150 --> 00:40:19,020 Somehow that exception didn't get the software excited. 853 00:40:19,020 --> 00:40:20,610 So if you showed up, actually this 854 00:40:20,610 --> 00:40:22,800 is a good example of when you might 855 00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:27,180 want to run your minimum fuel burn, 856 00:40:27,180 --> 00:40:28,680 maximum endurance airspeed. 857 00:40:28,680 --> 00:40:32,028 So you get to the airport and you didn't check the NOTAMs 858 00:40:32,028 --> 00:40:33,570 or maybe it was a newly issued NOTAM. 859 00:40:33,570 --> 00:40:35,370 And they tell you the runway's closed 860 00:40:35,370 --> 00:40:38,380 and it won't reopen for another half hour. 861 00:40:38,380 --> 00:40:41,760 So in that case, you're going to go out and loiter somewhere 862 00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:44,310 until the airport reopens unless you 863 00:40:44,310 --> 00:40:45,990 want to land somewhere else. 864 00:40:45,990 --> 00:40:47,790 OK. 865 00:40:47,790 --> 00:40:51,690 The next page is apparently about NOTAMs. 866 00:40:51,690 --> 00:40:53,970 And over on the right, we have the weather 867 00:40:53,970 --> 00:40:55,835 which Tina already showed you. 868 00:40:55,835 --> 00:40:57,210 And you see the density altitude? 869 00:40:57,210 --> 00:40:58,560 Look at that. 870 00:40:58,560 --> 00:41:01,470 It's minus 2,500 feet. 871 00:41:01,470 --> 00:41:05,670 It's 2,500 feet below sea level at Hanscom Field. 872 00:41:05,670 --> 00:41:09,480 ForeFlight can give you the TAF and the MOS, as I said. 873 00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:12,360 So this was, I think, on Sunday. 874 00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:13,740 And have a look there. 875 00:41:13,740 --> 00:41:15,480 We're getting the weather for Wednesday, 876 00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:17,850 so we can plan our trip to return-- 877 00:41:17,850 --> 00:41:19,583 what's today, Wednesday? 878 00:41:19,583 --> 00:41:21,000 And look, the MOS is pretty right. 879 00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:21,690 It's nice. 880 00:41:21,690 --> 00:41:23,340 It's not too much wind. 881 00:41:23,340 --> 00:41:27,480 190 at 5 knots, overcast below 12,000. 882 00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:29,010 Here's Garmin Pilot. 883 00:41:29,010 --> 00:41:32,790 Garmin really believes in the old white on black, 884 00:41:32,790 --> 00:41:35,580 like a 1970s monitor. 885 00:41:35,580 --> 00:41:38,220 ForeFlight will actually flip into sort of a style like this 886 00:41:38,220 --> 00:41:41,190 at nighttime. 887 00:41:41,190 --> 00:41:47,190 And this one, it doesn't highlight for you. 888 00:41:47,190 --> 00:41:49,578 It's the same time as I was using ForeFlight, 889 00:41:49,578 --> 00:41:51,120 and nowhere in here does it highlight 890 00:41:51,120 --> 00:41:54,420 that that runway 523 is closed or that two niner is 891 00:41:54,420 --> 00:41:56,100 having any kind of issue. 892 00:41:56,100 --> 00:41:57,330 I think it was the same time. 893 00:41:57,330 --> 00:41:58,050 I could be wrong. 894 00:41:58,050 --> 00:41:58,710 Yeah, see? 895 00:41:58,710 --> 00:42:00,600 523 closed. 896 00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:03,930 Runway 1129 closed except one hour prior permission. 897 00:42:03,930 --> 00:42:06,510 So you're fat, dumb, and happy looking at this page, 898 00:42:06,510 --> 00:42:08,820 getting all ready to go to Hanscom Field, 899 00:42:08,820 --> 00:42:10,920 and then if you don't check the NOTAMs, 900 00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:12,750 you discover that there's no runway. 901 00:42:12,750 --> 00:42:16,080 So another good reason to always have some reserve fuel 902 00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:18,940 and not overcommit to your plan. 903 00:42:18,940 --> 00:42:19,440 All right. 904 00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:21,540 In-flight weather sources. 905 00:42:21,540 --> 00:42:25,110 There's something called TWEB, transcribed weather broadcasts. 906 00:42:25,110 --> 00:42:28,500 You might be asked about it on the exam. 907 00:42:28,500 --> 00:42:30,540 I doubt it. 908 00:42:30,540 --> 00:42:35,310 Anyway, that's my friend Eric, again, with his DC-3. 909 00:42:35,310 --> 00:42:38,520 If you were flying a DC-3 in its prime, 910 00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:40,740 you might have heard of TWEB. 911 00:42:40,740 --> 00:42:42,930 HIWAS is still being broadcast off 912 00:42:42,930 --> 00:42:45,930 of certain VORs that are indicated on the chart. 913 00:42:45,930 --> 00:42:50,280 So look at this, see that H symbol there in the middle? 914 00:42:50,280 --> 00:42:53,700 That H symbol tells you that if you tune in to this VOR 915 00:42:53,700 --> 00:42:55,680 and tell your audio panel in the airplane 916 00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:59,910 that you want to actually listen to whatever is being modulated, 917 00:42:59,910 --> 00:43:04,500 that you'll hear this pre-recorded weather 918 00:43:04,500 --> 00:43:06,510 announcement about maybe thunderstorms 919 00:43:06,510 --> 00:43:07,840 in a certain area. 920 00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:10,050 You can call Flight Service Enroute. 921 00:43:10,050 --> 00:43:12,030 They're very helpful. 922 00:43:12,030 --> 00:43:13,980 They'll take a PIREP from you and they'll 923 00:43:13,980 --> 00:43:15,642 tell you what is going on. 924 00:43:15,642 --> 00:43:17,850 They can call your mom if you're going to be late due 925 00:43:17,850 --> 00:43:20,130 to forecast headwinds. 926 00:43:20,130 --> 00:43:24,563 I was actually flying through New York on my way to DC, 927 00:43:24,563 --> 00:43:25,980 and there were horrible headwinds. 928 00:43:25,980 --> 00:43:28,480 I was in a Diamond Star, which was not a very fast airplane, 929 00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:30,390 so when you've got a 50 knot headwind, 930 00:43:30,390 --> 00:43:34,750 you slow down to a Honda Accord speeds. 931 00:43:34,750 --> 00:43:37,020 So I asked New York for a frequency change 932 00:43:37,020 --> 00:43:39,437 to Flight Service and they said, well, why do you need it? 933 00:43:39,437 --> 00:43:41,610 And I said, well, I want to have them call my mom 934 00:43:41,610 --> 00:43:43,190 and tell her I'm going to be late. 935 00:43:43,190 --> 00:43:44,940 And they said, oh, we can do that for you. 936 00:43:44,940 --> 00:43:48,870 So in between vectoring the airbus's out to Germany, 937 00:43:48,870 --> 00:43:50,592 they were calling my mom. 938 00:43:50,592 --> 00:43:52,050 I think each controller in New York 939 00:43:52,050 --> 00:43:55,050 has an assistant right next to him or her 940 00:43:55,050 --> 00:43:59,560 and that was who actually made the phone call. 941 00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:01,170 TINA SRIVASTAVA: Just quick note. 942 00:44:01,170 --> 00:44:02,430 The last point there. 943 00:44:02,430 --> 00:44:04,780 So Flight Service can accept your PIREP. 944 00:44:04,780 --> 00:44:07,200 So when we talked about how you should make a pilot 945 00:44:07,200 --> 00:44:09,850 report or a PIREP, you can call them and tell them, 946 00:44:09,850 --> 00:44:12,063 hey, I experienced turbulence. 947 00:44:12,063 --> 00:44:13,980 PHILIP GREENSPUN: I think if it's really ugly, 948 00:44:13,980 --> 00:44:19,033 the controllers can also put it in, like if it's icing or-- 949 00:44:19,033 --> 00:44:20,700 TINA SRIVASTAVA: Wind shear they usually 950 00:44:20,700 --> 00:44:23,190 accept cause wind shear is such a bad thing, 951 00:44:23,190 --> 00:44:24,720 and you're fighting the wind shear 952 00:44:24,720 --> 00:44:26,345 and trying to deal with the wind shear, 953 00:44:26,345 --> 00:44:29,283 so they'll usually except that PIREP. 954 00:44:29,283 --> 00:44:30,450 PHILIP GREENSPUN: All right. 955 00:44:30,450 --> 00:44:31,940 NEXRAD. 956 00:44:31,940 --> 00:44:35,370 So this is an actual photo of our Cirrus 957 00:44:35,370 --> 00:44:37,990 screen on our way to Oshkosh. 958 00:44:37,990 --> 00:44:39,990 So remember, I showed you that one earlier which 959 00:44:39,990 --> 00:44:42,340 with the track from FlightAware. 960 00:44:42,340 --> 00:44:49,300 So we had planned to go from Rutland, Vermont, oh, sorry. 961 00:44:49,300 --> 00:44:52,190 We had planned, I guess, yeah, we came up with a new plan. 962 00:44:52,190 --> 00:44:56,580 We really wanted to go from Bedford over to Syracuse, 963 00:44:56,580 --> 00:44:58,850 and I think initially we decided that going to Rutland 964 00:44:58,850 --> 00:45:05,390 would keep us away from the rain. 965 00:45:05,390 --> 00:45:07,550 The NEXRAD radar, what they're really seeing 966 00:45:07,550 --> 00:45:09,660 is water in the clouds. 967 00:45:09,660 --> 00:45:12,110 So they can actually see rain. 968 00:45:12,110 --> 00:45:14,510 They can't see a cloud that's just vapor 969 00:45:14,510 --> 00:45:18,440 and it's going to produce a rain storm at some point. 970 00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:21,350 They're really seeing the big water droplets of rain. 971 00:45:21,350 --> 00:45:22,880 Anyway, so we elected to fly over 972 00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:25,250 here and refuel at Watertown, New York 973 00:45:25,250 --> 00:45:27,620 instead of at Syracuse. 974 00:45:27,620 --> 00:45:29,545 Oksana was on that flight. 975 00:45:29,545 --> 00:45:30,920 We flew through some of that rain 976 00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:32,450 and it actually was pretty smooth. 977 00:45:32,450 --> 00:45:34,460 So we probably could have just charged through, 978 00:45:34,460 --> 00:45:36,520 but we took a more conservative route. 979 00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:37,020 OK. 980 00:45:37,020 --> 00:45:39,560 So NEXRAD data, instead of paying 981 00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:43,550 for a receiver in your airplane and then paying a subscription 982 00:45:43,550 --> 00:45:47,660 fee, the FAA give you NEXRAD data as well 983 00:45:47,660 --> 00:45:50,210 as a bunch of other stuff, like some text weather data. 984 00:45:50,210 --> 00:45:52,670 That's another good reason to be able to read METARs 985 00:45:52,670 --> 00:45:54,628 because if you're looking at it in the cockpit, 986 00:45:54,628 --> 00:45:56,240 it could be on a pretty small display 987 00:45:56,240 --> 00:45:59,150 and the raw format is very compact and actually very 988 00:45:59,150 --> 00:46:02,690 convenient for in-flight use. 989 00:46:02,690 --> 00:46:05,910 Anyway, here's a little diagram of how it's transmitted. 990 00:46:05,910 --> 00:46:08,990 You have to have this-- 991 00:46:08,990 --> 00:46:11,930 you have to have-- let's see if we talked about this. 992 00:46:11,930 --> 00:46:16,610 Yeah, so you have to have a UAT receiver to get these data. 993 00:46:16,610 --> 00:46:19,550 The aircraft position, see the big airliner 994 00:46:19,550 --> 00:46:25,880 transmitting on 1090 megahertz extended squitter it's called. 995 00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:29,090 That's fine, but you need to be able to receive 996 00:46:29,090 --> 00:46:34,070 on 978 megahertz, which is this alternative frequency that I 997 00:46:34,070 --> 00:46:35,990 guess had more bandwidth available. 998 00:46:35,990 --> 00:46:38,780 And that's where the FAA can push all these data 999 00:46:38,780 --> 00:46:41,240 up to you, like about other traffic, even traffic 1000 00:46:41,240 --> 00:46:44,330 who doesn't comply with ADS-B. Although by January 1001 00:46:44,330 --> 00:46:50,630 1st of next year, almost everybody will have ADS-B out 1002 00:46:50,630 --> 00:46:52,760 at least. 1003 00:46:52,760 --> 00:46:56,570 Anyway, so that the feds are pushing this stuff up 1004 00:46:56,570 --> 00:46:57,980 to your airplane. 1005 00:46:57,980 --> 00:47:00,222 I'm going to turn it over to Tina now to talk about-- 1006 00:47:00,222 --> 00:47:02,430 TINA SRIVASTAVA: Yeah, so I just added in this slide. 1007 00:47:02,430 --> 00:47:05,660 This is the one that we had been talking about. 1008 00:47:05,660 --> 00:47:09,830 If you're in a plane that does not have the ADS-B receiver 1009 00:47:09,830 --> 00:47:12,590 but you want to receive that information so that you 1010 00:47:12,590 --> 00:47:16,070 get real-time weather information or real time 1011 00:47:16,070 --> 00:47:18,740 traffic information, you can actually 1012 00:47:18,740 --> 00:47:21,020 make that happen by building it yourself. 1013 00:47:21,020 --> 00:47:21,950 And I did that. 1014 00:47:21,950 --> 00:47:24,020 It really doesn't take very long. 1015 00:47:24,020 --> 00:47:26,660 If you want to seem really cool, you 1016 00:47:26,660 --> 00:47:30,200 can go and buy just a regular Raspberry Pi 1017 00:47:30,200 --> 00:47:31,488 and a couple different parts. 1018 00:47:31,488 --> 00:47:33,530 And also that link will show you how you can just 1019 00:47:33,530 --> 00:47:35,780 buy a little kit where they've put everything together 1020 00:47:35,780 --> 00:47:36,800 and you just buy it. 1021 00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:38,780 It's very easy to assemble. 1022 00:47:38,780 --> 00:47:41,610 So it just has a little Raspberry Pi inside. 1023 00:47:41,610 --> 00:47:45,230 And it has a little cooling fan, and then it has these antennas. 1024 00:47:45,230 --> 00:47:47,820 The Stratics Software is actually 1025 00:47:47,820 --> 00:47:49,850 kind of free, open source software, 1026 00:47:49,850 --> 00:47:50,960 and it's really great. 1027 00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:54,260 And it syncs up to your other apps. 1028 00:47:54,260 --> 00:47:57,080 So for example with ForeFlight, it just 1029 00:47:57,080 --> 00:48:00,530 shows up like a Wi-Fi signal that you connect to. 1030 00:48:00,530 --> 00:48:02,750 And then while you're in the air, when 1031 00:48:02,750 --> 00:48:05,520 you don't have access to this data, 1032 00:48:05,520 --> 00:48:07,040 this will actually update. 1033 00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:10,970 So you can see on the right is kind of a zoomed in picture 1034 00:48:10,970 --> 00:48:12,080 from ForeFlights. 1035 00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:14,720 So it shows that you can see the weather 1036 00:48:14,720 --> 00:48:16,730 on the bottom left corner and then 1037 00:48:16,730 --> 00:48:21,900 you also see these little pictures that show traffic. 1038 00:48:21,900 --> 00:48:23,990 So yeah, exactly. 1039 00:48:23,990 --> 00:48:27,140 So on the further bottom right, you can also see-- 1040 00:48:27,140 --> 00:48:30,230 it just shows you other airplanes, other traffic, 1041 00:48:30,230 --> 00:48:32,455 and kind of the altitude that they're at. 1042 00:48:32,455 --> 00:48:33,830 And so it's really useful I think 1043 00:48:33,830 --> 00:48:36,860 it's kind of nice to have, especially in a little airplane 1044 00:48:36,860 --> 00:48:39,410 to have that visibility and knowledge that you're not just 1045 00:48:39,410 --> 00:48:43,880 relying on Flight Service giving or kind of like a area 1046 00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:46,190 controller giving you traffic advisories, 1047 00:48:46,190 --> 00:48:48,740 but you can see it in advance. 1048 00:48:48,740 --> 00:48:51,200 We're about to dive into human factors, 1049 00:48:51,200 --> 00:48:55,250 and Philip has talked a lot about using the person sitting 1050 00:48:55,250 --> 00:48:58,460 next to you whether they are actually a pilot or just 1051 00:48:58,460 --> 00:48:59,810 a friend. 1052 00:48:59,810 --> 00:49:02,780 Even just a friend can sit there and hold the iPad 1053 00:49:02,780 --> 00:49:05,120 and see the little blue traffic. 1054 00:49:05,120 --> 00:49:07,790 And then when they hear on the radio that's someone saying, 1055 00:49:07,790 --> 00:49:09,980 hey, it looks like in this situation, 1056 00:49:09,980 --> 00:49:13,460 no traffic, 3 o'clock, you're trying to look for that plane. 1057 00:49:13,460 --> 00:49:15,740 Well, they can have a little sense of, OK, yeah, 1058 00:49:15,740 --> 00:49:17,570 it's near that, and they can help 1059 00:49:17,570 --> 00:49:19,470 you find the other aircraft. 1060 00:49:19,470 --> 00:49:20,465 So it's very helpful. 1061 00:49:20,465 --> 00:49:22,840 PHILIP GREENSPUN: How much were the parts for that, Tina? 1062 00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:24,410 TINA SRIVASTAVA: It's like $80. 1063 00:49:24,410 --> 00:49:24,820 PHILIP GREENSPUN: OK. 1064 00:49:24,820 --> 00:49:25,320 Yeah. 1065 00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:27,620 So the ones that you can buy commercially all packaged, 1066 00:49:27,620 --> 00:49:28,730 like the Stratux-- 1067 00:49:28,730 --> 00:49:30,890 I think this is a play on Stratus. 1068 00:49:30,890 --> 00:49:33,040 This is one of the competitors in that market. 1069 00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:36,980 They're anywhere from $400 to $1,000, I think. 1070 00:49:36,980 --> 00:49:42,530 The commercial ones also have an electronic gyro in there 1071 00:49:42,530 --> 00:49:45,410 and AHARs, attitude heading reference system. 1072 00:49:45,410 --> 00:49:49,290 So they can actually give you on your iPad an attitude indicator 1073 00:49:49,290 --> 00:49:53,770 and some information about your speed and so forth. 1074 00:49:53,770 --> 00:49:54,270 All right. 1075 00:49:54,270 --> 00:49:58,090 So this is a reminder that, again, all those data 1076 00:49:58,090 --> 00:50:02,700 are intended to help you fly within the VFR weather 1077 00:50:02,700 --> 00:50:04,800 minimums, which provide a good margin of safety. 1078 00:50:08,540 --> 00:50:13,480 I put this $20 magazine up here for you guys 1079 00:50:13,480 --> 00:50:16,000 because this whole talk has really 1080 00:50:16,000 --> 00:50:18,190 been about software and different ways of spinning 1081 00:50:18,190 --> 00:50:19,760 the same data. 1082 00:50:19,760 --> 00:50:23,302 So this is everything, in case you're not a core six major. 1083 00:50:23,302 --> 00:50:24,760 This is everything you need to know 1084 00:50:24,760 --> 00:50:29,247 to become a programmer in one $20 magazine. 1085 00:50:29,247 --> 00:50:31,330 TINA SRIVASTAVA: So we're running a little behind. 1086 00:50:31,330 --> 00:50:33,580 So I'm going to go straight to human factors. 1087 00:50:33,580 --> 00:50:35,080 While I'm pulling it up, let Phillip 1088 00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:36,760 know if you have any more questions. 1089 00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:38,510 PHILIP GREENSPUN: Yeah, anything going on? 1090 00:50:40,714 --> 00:50:43,315 AUDIENCE: How do you know if your weather briefing is 1091 00:50:43,315 --> 00:50:45,980 adequate with all these sources out there and you're not good. 1092 00:50:45,980 --> 00:50:47,840 I'm just not really sure. 1093 00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:49,590 PHILIP GREENSPUN: That's a great question. 1094 00:50:49,590 --> 00:50:51,965 How do you know if you're a weather briefing is adequate? 1095 00:50:51,965 --> 00:50:54,500 The professional weather briefers at Leidos, 1096 00:50:54,500 --> 00:50:59,290 at 1-800-WX-BRIEF, they tend to go a little above and beyond. 1097 00:50:59,290 --> 00:51:02,330 They'll give you NOTAMs about any VOR that's out of service 1098 00:51:02,330 --> 00:51:05,120 on your route of flight, even if you're navigating with the GPS. 1099 00:51:05,120 --> 00:51:10,340 So if you're at all unsure, just do your self-service stuff 1100 00:51:10,340 --> 00:51:13,640 online, and then just call 1-800-WX-BRIEF and ask 1101 00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:14,760 for a full briefing. 1102 00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:16,670 It won't take you more than 10 minutes, 1103 00:51:16,670 --> 00:51:19,930 and you will definitely be at least-- 1104 00:51:19,930 --> 00:51:22,058 you'll probably be over briefed, at that point. 1105 00:51:22,058 --> 00:51:23,600 They'll tell you about an unlit tower 1106 00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:27,380 even if you're flying at noon, and there's 1107 00:51:27,380 --> 00:51:30,710 no possibility of it being dark and the lighting on the tower 1108 00:51:30,710 --> 00:51:33,160 making a difference.