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My First CC flight |
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Weather |
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Like many other outdoor activities the weather is a major factor in our sport. A good pilot will learn a tremendous amount about the weather, where to find information and how to read the sky just by looking up. The wind is the part of weather that effects us most. Throw a paper airplane into the air on a windy day and watch what happens to it. |
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There are thousands of places to find information about the weather. If you are a student pilot you will need to know how to read and interpret this information to get your license and be safe. Below are some of the weather sites I use. A good place to start is to learn what weather is and what causes it. What better place to go then NASA. What’s ceiling, visibility and is it VFR or IFR? AWOS stands for Automated Weather Observation Station Many airports around the country have AWOSs. Somerset airport has one installed on the airport and it provides a local weather report, continuously. It can be found on the radio at 120.600Mhz, on the telephone at 908-722-2139 and on the internet in many places. Here are two: http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/current/KSMQ.html Winds and Forecast. This is what I look at before going to the airport. Graphical representation of: winds, temp, sky, visibility, precipitation and more Forecast winds and temp aloft New York City Scranton, Pa I find www.Intellcast.com to be one of the best places to find almost anything related to weather. Make sure to go through all the links on the left side of the page, Surface Analyses, winds, temp, precipitation, radar, local & national. Here’s where I start. NOAA National Weather Service / Aviation Weather Center SMQ Sounding. These are plots of temperature, dew point, winds and height. This will tell you the chance of thermal activity and the height of the clouds. Once you learn how to interpret them (FAA Glider Flying Handbook chapter 9) you can move on to this one. National Weather Service Glossary of terms |
