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About AOPA. 414,000 members Largest general aviation organization Virtually all active pilots 50-100 hours per year Member service Lobbying Offer Jeppesen wx on website:www.aopa.org . GA pilot population.
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About AOPA • 414,000 members • Largest general aviation organization • Virtually all active pilots • 50-100 hours per year • Member service • Lobbying • Offer Jeppesen wx on website:www.aopa.org
GA pilot population • Certificate levels: Student, Private, Commercial, Airline Transport, Flight Instructor • Ratings: Single-engine land, multi-engine land… instrument! • Instrument=able to file IFR flight plans, fly by reference to instruments in adverse wx … • … when you can’t see where you’re going!
More flying on instruments • Better handling, monitoring • Traffic advisories, sequencing and separation service • Inflight wx info from CWSUs • Greater need for pre- and inflight wx • Safer, but much more demanding • With Internet, more reliance on self-briefing
WX EDUCATION • Approach-avoidance • Seems too abstract • Similar to pilot-doctor adversarial relationship • Only 8 weather-related questions on written private pilot test • Can miss them all, and still pass!
SLEEP-INDUCING TERMS • Dry adiabatic lapse rate • Moist adiabatic lapse rate • Coriolis force • Skew-T log-P • Conditional instability
How much weather flying? • 503,740 = total pilot population • 309,865 = instrument-rated pilots • Ergo, 62% of all pilots
Briefing strategies, old-school • Call FAA-employed weather briefer • 1/800/WX-BRIEF • Standard, Abbreviated, Outlook briefings • Difax • “Ring-through” to NWS meteorologists
Briefing stragegies, “New school” • FAA subcontracts briefing services to Lockheed-Martin, 2006 • Teething problems! • 58 Flight Service stations before …. • 3 automated stations now (Leesburg, DFW, Prescott AZ) • Retirements and new briefers; no local experience
Briefing strategies, “New school” • Internet-driven • Many, many websites • Contact FSS to update and file flight plan only! • L-M poor reception
Modern online briefing • ADDS • Fltplan.com • AOPA internet flight planner • Unisys • WSI, other private wx suppliers • DUAT • New experimental products
WSI • https://www.pilotbrief.com/ • Interactive overlays • Route-specific • Video synoptics
Cg/vis/wx graphical grids • Mouseover function • Goes out 12 hours • Many elements presented • Hourly forecast conditions • Ceiling and visibility • Only at selected WSFOs …. now
Grids, cont’d • http://www.weather.gov/gsp • Click on a city • Scroll down to “Hourly weather graph” • Add cg and vis to meteogram elements
Problem! • The following, alone, are “not for use” by pilots: • CCFP (for meteorologists and dispatchers) • CIP/FIP (it’s “supplementary”) • G-Airmet (it’s not yet operational)
Summing up • Self-briefing= Need for online education • FSS wx analysis being bypassed • Make experimental products operational • Push gridded graphical forecasts • 30-hour TAFs at every station • Last but not least: Fix Lockheed-Martin problems