Routine
With thunderstorm season approaching I've started flying with my handheld GPS as a means of getting weather, in particular thunderstorm cells and lightning strikes, on board.
The GPS is certainly useful although due to the inherent delays in the way weather is datalinked it's best used as a strategic tool and not a tactical one.
But I do love it and it's just one of those things that I don't want to be without. On good weather days I usually leave it in my flight bag but it's a great aid to have on those days when weather is an issue.
The other neat thing was grabbing my GPS tracks and dumping them into Google Earth. If anything, it shows just how routine freight life is. Even as a floater I pretty much always fly to the same places, along the same routes at the same altitudes.
For whatever reason, over the seven or eight days of flying represented in the image above I was spending a lot of time going to and from Sioux Falls. A quick check with the ruler inside of Google Earth shows a whopping differance of about six miles between all the trips down and back from Sioux Falls.
That's just the difference between which runway I used that particular day and how quickly I was cleared on course. It's probably just the geek in my but I thought it was pretty amusing just how closely one day's path resembles the next.
If you're a Google Earth fanatic like me and want to get a closer view, here's a link to the .KML file.
posted by Will at 4:52 PM
4 Comments:
Check out GPSvisualizer.com
to make some nice google maps, and profiles; free
thanks for sharing
this week; the winds will be interesting to say the least
Looks like you're wearing a groove.
Are you talking about something like a Garmin 396/496 + XM weather?
I'm considering signing up for an XM package, as I already have a 396. Being cheap, I see the cheapest plan only has nexrad + metar/taf.
No lightning or storm tracks.
How useful do you find those over just the rader image?
Yeah, the GPS I use is actually a marine unit (Garmin 378) that I got as a Christmas present. I created a custom set of waypoints of airports, navaids and enroute fixes in Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Michigan just to make it a little more useful for situational awareness.
Much of the weather data is the same between the marine and aviation units.
Key for me is the Nexrad, lightning data and storm cells, which are the same for both the marine and aviation units. (I actually prefer the way storm cells are represented on the marine unit over the aviation units.)
I really like the lightning data so I went one step up from the basic XM subscription. Rain is rain and it's nice to see the heavy areas but lightning for sure indicates a thunderstorm.
The storm cell data is great too because the unit displays a projected path in terms of time, so you can see where the thing is expected to be in 15 minute intervals which is great for planning purposes, especially if it's projected to be right over your destination.
That, along with tops information goes a long way to figuring out how nasty the thing is.
Having XM weather on board has been worth every penny and then some.
The key limitation is the XM is really a strategic tool, not a tactical one. It's pretty darn good, but it can take a while to update and I wouldn't try to work my way through a line of thunderstorms using XM alone because of the delays involved.
It's great for avoiding large areas of junk and asking for 10 degrees left or right 50 miles away to avoid an area of thunderstorms.
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