Flying USA – September 2019

and out of sight from the normal

flight-planning flow.

Keeping up with these newer

weather products when investigating

weather hazards can be a challenge,

as you won’t find press releases

from the National Weather Ser vice

alerting you when new ones become

available. We recently produced a

new weather course at Sporty’s Pilot

Shop called “Aviation Weather—A

Pilot’s Guide.” In the process of

creating this course, I learned a good

deal from meteorologist and aviation

writer Scott Dimmich about many

of these valuable NWS resources

that I had no idea existed. We made

it a major focus in the course to show

how to use the latest weather prod-

ucts like the GFA, MOS, TCF/ECF,

and thunderstorm/icing forecast

layers and how to interpret them

and help pilots go beyond the same

routine weather briefing.

Now, you could rely on the Flight

Service standard weather briefing in

its latest digital form in ForeFlight

or 1800wxbrief.com, but even this

method won’t expose you to the latest

weather tools, such as the GFA, TCF

or MOS. This leaves the modern,

weather-inquisitive pilot in the

position of seeking out supplemental

weather products from multiple

apps and online resources. This

scattered briefing process might

go something like this:

1. Locate the surface analysis and
   prog charts in your EFB app or AWC
   website to learn the big picture.


2. Enter a route on the moving map
   in your EFB app.


3. Toggle 10 different weather layers
   on and off, as permitted by the app.


4. Jump over to the Airports page
   to view additional text weather

products, such as MOS forecasts or

NWS forecast discussions.

5. Switch to the Weather section of
   the app to view specialized forecast
   charts and maps.


6. Go online to the Aviation
   Weather Center website to view
   the Graphical Forecast for Aviation
   cloud tops and bases forecast (good
   luck finding this because it’s under
   the Tools menu and not Forecasts).


7. Aimlessly wander the National
   Weather Service website trying to
   figure out what other innovative
   weather maps are hidden behind
   lists of menus and buttons (check out
   the Rapid Refresh Radar forecast, if
   you’re skilled enough to find it).

Sound familiar? Wouldn’t it be nice

if there were an app or online resource

that brought all this information into

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