Transcription
So today we're going to start, uh, talking about, well, it's obviously Aviation Weather Services and some of the areas in which we can get more information, uh, before we go out on a flight. So, uh, it's definitely focused on the second half of the semester where we start to look at more details and number-oriented stuff, um, such as METARs and Terminal Area Forecasts. We'll touch on those today. We'll go into detail on those a little bit later in a different lecture, uh, so we can break them apart a little bit more. But at least I can kind of, you know, give you, uh, a little bit of information to get you thinking about it. And, uh, if you kind of follow my lead and ask that, uh, you go ahead and look at, uh, METARs and Terminal your forecasts to get used to the terminology in raw form, uh, because there's a lot of abbreviations and stuff you have to get to know. And, uh, you know, using some of those tools that I've shown you where you can, you know, transfer the raw into, you know, normal language, uh, or decode it, uh, to make it a little bit easier for you to understand as you go through the process of learning it. So, really, really important as a pilot or a dispatcher, anybody else associated with aviation, be able to read this kind of information, um, because all your flights will be based upon being able to read and understand these, uh, the the information that you're looking, looking at, but also to be able to kind of project, you know, you know, your skills, uh, the capabilities of the aircraft that you're going to be flying, and you be able to put that all into, you know, your flight plan, uh, in the end. Because it's not just about, you know, this data or that data, it's, as a pilot, op, you know, pilot in command, it's your job to be able to put all that stuff together and, uh, in a kind of a cohesive way before you actually do the flight. So, we'll talk a little bit about that today. Let's see if we get this going. There we go.
Uh, we'll touch on a few different areas. So, uh, weather information sources, where do we get this stuff? The forecast as far as the accuracy, which, uh, they're still OB, obviously working on. They're not always the best. But, uh, aviation forecast discussions, which I will show you where to get that and the kind of information that you can get from it, uh, if I can pull it off and, uh, get my iPhone to work, I can show you how I, I get it on my phone or through an app called ForeFlight. Uh, and, uh, there's also ways which I'll show you later when we start to go through the website, uh, for, uh, Aviation Weather Center, how you can get to the aviation forecast discussions, which is kind of a hidden secret, uh, to make, uh, understand the weather a little bit easier. So, uh, we'll talk about AIRMETs and SIGMETs, the differences between the two and the importance of them. And then, of course, in-route in-weather information services, especially at the end when I think one of the last slides that I do, uh, I talk about how to communicate with flight service while you're flying an aircraft and you're having difficulty, uh, because of the radio communications of being able to get a hold of them when you need some of that important information on your flight.
So, we'll go ahead and start off with a pretty simple slide. Talks about weather versus climate. I know we've mentioned it before, um, but I just want to make sure you guys understand the differences between the two. So I put it on a slide. So weather and climate are both very important. So climate is kind of the big dog, right? So it's, it's something that happens over a large area and it's very, you know, fairly consistent over time. In other words, big large deserts, you know, exist over higher pressure areas, you know, rainy areas like the equator and the riparian forest and stuff up north, um, happen under low pressure areas, you know, I mean, think of, you know, the Hadley cells, right, where it creates all that, all those thunderstorms in the interconversion zone around the equator. So climate is something that happens, uh, on a big scale over a really long period of time. And then weather is what happens within those climates all the time. So, uh, it can change within minutes or hours. And of course, in this class, all we really are doing is focusing on the weather because, of course, weather is what we fly in as pilots, uh, because it, because it can change so quickly, it's better for us to understand what the current weather is instead of what it could be like way off, you know, years and years in the future, which is what climate is. Um, we need to know the here and now, uh, for our flights, even if it's a long flight, right? So anyway, uh, as we move on, we want to figure out where we get this data from in the first place, uh, and it comes from a variety of different sources. Uh, this picture shows, uh, a pretty, pretty, pretty good culmination of, uh, different sources: satellites, weather balloons, ships, airplanes, that kind of stuff. And, uh, I'll show you some slides here in a second which is kind of cool, showing you how they can get some of this information. But it all, all that, all that data that's acquired, uh, ends up going to a particular place. I'll show you that in a sec. Um, but in order to obtain it, I mean, we can think of satellites. We can see how, uh, satellites can give us all sorts of good stuff, as far as like water vapor and temperatures and heat signatures and that kind of stuff to kind of figure out trends of where things might go. Uh, and then, uh, I'll show you how planes are an integral part, the next slide, on being able to boost this with a ton of real-time data to make it better for all of us, uh, that are maybe flying a little closer to the ground than, uh, you know, 38 to 42,000 feet. And of course, all this information will go to a regional, uh, weather, uh, uh, uh, meteorologist, that can be able to disseminate it to us as pilots, uh, through, uh, aviation weather centers where, uh, we'll go ahead and see that and we'll show you that in a sec. But the next, uh, slide is kind of cool.
So, uh, this shows, uh, some of the aircraft that are attached with sensors, and those sensors acquire a bunch of weather information, similar to the radiosonde, and then, you know, that box that's contained underneath the weather balloon that travels upwards into the atmosphere. So they have all these sensors on these airplanes, and the neat thing about it is, of course, the crew don't, they don't have to do anything to to transmit it. It's done automatically through the ACARS system, uh, which is an automated system. Uh, so this works on a similar fashion. Uh, it's all automated, which is nice. And what's unique about this, especially for pilots, is that it start, starts from the moment the aircraft takes off, okay? So it gets all that information as it continues to fly, as it departs an area, gets into cruise, so then, you know, whatever, however far that aircraft flies, gets all that data as it's flying along. And of course, as it descends through the atmosphere, it's a coming for a landing, it gets a lot of the local weather. So you think of all these different aircraft, right? So it's 650,000 observations a day. That's a lot, right? That, it's, it's just excess data that can be used by meteorologists to be able to put this all together to give a better, uh, uh, you know, more, more detailed data, uh, to make their accuracy much, much better. So, uh, when we look at, uh, uh, air, it's called, it's called an ARREP, um, but we'll look at that in a different lecture. I'll show you what they look like, and it's, it's actually pretty amazing how much data you get from them. So, kind of neat way of, uh, acquiring it. That's how aviation does its part to kind of help out with that. Uh, other things. So when all this data comes in, it goes to a, a specific place, right? So for us, it's the NOAA on the East Coast, and then it gets kind of spread out from there, uh, on. In Europe, I think it's in Britain, uh, they have their own version of the NOAA, and they all acquire all that information and then kind of crunch it, uh, through computers, uh, to give them the information that they need, uh, to send out to different types. So everybody needs different types of weather, right? Farmers need different types of weather, um, you know, uh, people that sail ships need different types of weather, and of course, aircraft need more of the weather that's within the atmosphere because that's what we're flying.
So here's a list of about five different, uh, areas that the data gets sent to as far as forecasting offices. Air, Air Route Traffic Control Center, so the ARTCC, and what they do is when you get in route, so usually above 10,000 feet, you go into, in this case, around, uh, the LA area, you go into LA Center. And once you go into LA Center, as far as the controller, that's the Air Route, Traffic Control Center, Center, and they're the ones that can help you, uh, at least a little bit in terms of being able to work around some of the weather as you're flying in route, like thunderstorms and stuff, uh, icing and big storms. Um, but they all need to be aware of it because they need to be able to know whether or not they're going to have to vector or or have some of the aircraft go in different paths that they normally would, uh, because of the weather. Automated Flight Service Stations, of course, are very important because, of course, when we get our standard weather brief from the briefer and also from Flight Service as we're flying along, um, they need to, of course, have the most recent data. Private weather companies, uh, so you think of some of the apps that are out there that you get information from, they'll receive the raw data after it's kind of been crunched up by the, uh, NOAA, and then they kind of manipulate it to give them what they feel, uh, is important to whatever their users are using. So if you think about, uh, you know, why weather would be different, well, the raw data is all the same, right? Uh, but it's how people interpret and, and if you look at the weather reporting from like one, one TV station to the next, you'll see that they put weather in different perspectives or they might predict this versus that, uh, and you'll find out, you know, every, you know, and because of that, uh, you can get, well, different predictions. We'll talk about predictions or forecasts here in a second, um, from the information that they receive.
So, uh, other people that get this data are the airlines. So the airlines give the data and they also receive the data because, of course, they don't have access to all the other airlines that are out there, uh, just to be able to, you know, look at the weather on their flights. But they need to be able to look outside of that bubble, and that's one of the ways that they can do it is through the NOAA system.
So where does, where those numbers get crunched at? Well, they get crunched at with this bad boy. So these are Cray computers. So there are so many variables associated with weather and to try and, you know, use all the physics and all that kind of stuff, uh, that goes along with trying to figure out, you know, what the weather's going to do because Mother Nature is kind of complex in that way, uh, they need to put it in the computer such as this. So this one is, uh, I think I have the note that it's headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Uh, it was created by Seymour Cray a long time ago, and it goes through a variety of different, um, uh, variables.
So, let's see if I can start mentioning some. So this is, as we start to go through this list, I mean, think about all the stuff we've already talked about in other lectures, right? And how things can change like friction and, and in this case, like pressure, right? Pressure can change as you fly across the United States. Pressures change, uh, and also pressures are different at different altitudes. So it has to take all that stuff into, uh, consideration when it's creating not only whatever the current forecast is, uh, but what it could be, uh, you know, let's say 24 or 38 or 30 hours from now. Temperature, it looks at wind, clouds, right? Not just any clouds, it likes clouds that are on the ground, which would be fog, ceilings, uh, clouds that are up high in the atmosphere. It has to look at all of them, how they would shape, form, and move. Precipitation, of course, is very important. Uh, evaporation and condensation goes along with stability, right? So that's important for them to know that along with the heat exchange, uh, and friction. Remember, anything above, uh, 2000 or below 2,000 feet, sorry about that, um, friction has to do, uh, with, uh, you know, how weather reacts in that particular area. So the nice thing is, is it evaluates all that data from the ground all the way up high into the atmosphere, and, uh, we all know that the weather balloons go up to, was it, 155,000 feet was like the highest one? Uh, so they go up pretty high, way higher than we would in an airplane, and, uh, but it gives them a better view or an understanding of what it would be like, or, you know, more, more data, more, more specificity.
Let's see. So once it goes through this system and they've kind of crunched it down, then it gets brought out to us, and so we, uh, can obtain the information through this website, which is Aviation Weather Center. There are other ways in which you can get, uh, the information. We'll talk about that in a second, uh, through like apps, uh, that you can, uh, sign up to or subscribe to, uh, online, whether it's your phone or iPad or whatever device you're using, and or it could be a proprietary one, uh, that's, uh, done through, let's say, if you fly for an airline and they use the JEPPESEN database stuff.
So Aviation Weather Center, this is the kind of the splash page or homepage for, uh, this website. Uh, this is actually a fairly amazing website because, uh, as goofy as it is, it's got a lot of stuff on it, right? But it's got a lot of information also. So it has, of course, all the dropdown menus at the very top are easy to access, but as you start to click through some of these, you'll find out that they're, they're just as detailed with each one that you bring down, uh, to make it easy. You can, uh, that right below it, there's that little header that says Aviation Weather Overview. Uh, there's a bunch of like, uh, rectangular radio-style buttons, uh, that you can press on in order to get specific information right away. So if you just want to look at the METARs or the forecasts or PIREPs and stuff like that, you can do it that way. Uh, if you want to kind of customize this so it will be the way you like it, uh, in the upper right-hand corner, there's a user, you can just go ahead and click on that menu to create a username and password, uh, so you can access this site and customize it for the way you like it. So, uh, in another lecture, I'll show you how I customized mine. Uh, I usually did, I do it in based upon, simply as, uh, we get standard weather briefings, so it's kind of set up that way to follow a standard weather briefing. And then there are certain things that I have in there based upon what I'm flying, whether I'm flying a piston or whether I'm flying a jet, you know, with different altitudes, all that kind of stuff.
So one of the things we'll, of course, uh, focus on is that G AIRMETs. That's, uh, important too, and, uh, you'll find out that's a pretty handy device to be able to click on that and get some information. Most of them down at the bottom, of course, have, uh, legends that you can gain all that other additional information. You can, you know, click on or off, uh, particular areas that you want to look at or focus on. And, uh, so you can kind of, uh, customize it, uh, without having to user, uh, name, just by clicking on some of those. Like, see those little blue boxes down at the bottom below the United States? You can turn on and off things, uh, to keep an eye on them if that's what you're interested in. Um, but it is the kind of the number one, uh, site for pilots because of all the information that is contained within it. And, uh, it is nice, you can, you can customize it. Um, so going from, we, we'll get more into that later, uh, in a different lecture, but, uh, right now, we're kind of focused on our forecasting methods.
So, uh, we look at how forecasting was done back in the day, and it was pretty simple, right? It was like, what's the weather today? Well, I think if it's today, it's warm, it's probably going to be warm tomorrow, or if it's a cooling trend, you could say it's going to be a little cooler. Um, but in a persistence forecast is something that kind of happens consistently and it's, uh, easy to predict. Uh, and a trend forecast is similar, what I just kind of mentioned, where, you know, if we're in a cooling trend like we are right now, you know, tomorrow is probably going to be a little cooler than today, and that kind of stuff. Then, of course, as we look at high, as the highs start to come in and start to warm our atmosphere, we get warmer weather, right? So I give you an example down at the bottom, you can see, uh, you know, the trend. If you can fill in that blank, you will be brilliant, which of course is nice. Um, but on the right-hand side, you can see the graphic. It shows three lows with a, a cold front coming off of them. And so, of course, if you were in one particular part of the United States and these fronts were coming over the top of you, uh, you would be able to, in a trend fashion, uh, figure out what the weather is going to be like based upon what's coming your way, uh, as you watch it come across the United States. Of course, we all know just by looking at this picture, it never looks like that, and that's why, that's why weather can be so frustrating sometimes.
Other ways to, uh, predict weather, of course, is watching TV and seeing how accurate they are, right? So, uh, you can see this is, there's the kernel truth to everything, right? So this is a pretty good indication of what forecasting is like because it is so hard to do. Even with great computers, you figure they'd get it down, but, uh, I don't know, there's, there's just enough chaos in the atmosphere, uh, to mess with them. So there's always this one: if you can't make up your mind, just go ahead and push the button and, uh, see what happens and just roll with that. That works out pretty good.
So if we're looking at the actual accuracy of a forecast, so, uh, a lot of times when we go to fly a plane, we need those forecasts because depending on how long our flight is, we need to be able to determine, uh, what the, the weather is going to be like by the time we get there. So an example is, we're flying from here to San Francisco in a 172. Takes what, an hour and 45 minutes or something like that, maybe two hours to get to San Francisco. A lot better than, you know, the seven to eight hours it takes you to drive. But you still, you take off from here and you fly up to San Francisco. You need to know what the weather is or what you can anticipate based upon the time of day that you're going to be leaving, uh, what it's going to be like. Can you get in? Uh, if you're a VFR only pilot, that's pretty important. If you're an IFR pilot, what are you flying? You know, are you able to go, let's say, down to minimums because the fog rolls in in San Francisco, uh, during some, some times of the year, certain times of the year, and it can get pretty bad. So these are some of the things that we need to know as a pilot, and that's why forecasting is so important for us because we actually make decisions based upon the information that we receive. So, of course, if you get crappy information in, right, you're going to get a bad forecast, and it does happen from time to time.
Important things about time between reports, right? So just as you understand that, as you try to forecast out by a number of days, you know, it gets less and less accurate. Same thing when it comes to anytime there's a big length of time from when the, the forecast was originally posted to when you're actually going to do your flight, you know, things can change. So, uh, longer the forecast, of course, is the less accurate it's going to be.
So if we take this graph and kind of blow it up a little bit so we can see the data a little bit better, and we kind of go in a, in a clockwise fashion, we can see if we start at the top with NOAA, which of course is like the big daddy of weather, right? You'd figure they'd be pretty accurate. Well, they're at 40%. So as you go around this thing, um, look at the numbers, they're pretty interesting. It's a biased picture, actually. So, and I'll explain that in a moment. I don't know if you guys can, if you guys can see patterns, you'll notice that one picture is very similar to another picture because that's the company that created this graphic. Um, but the point is, is everybody gets the data, and then they do the different things with it. So the two weathermen in the upper right-hand corner that taught us how, you know, the, the, the, the pressure gradient force, you know, works with a ball and a clipboard, all the way around to the year ahead forecast by Weather Trends 360, who actually created this graphic, and of course, theirs is the best, right? It's totally unbiased, for sure. And the actual weather they show is, of course, from their site. So my point is, don't focus actually on the numbers. Just understand forecasting is not an exact science. So as pilots, we need to be skeptical whenever we get some of these weather forecasts because we need to use more of our critical thinking skills to be able to determine, okay, if they think that the weather forecast is going to be whatever it is, right? So, if, what's the worst-case scenario for whatever flight I'm going to be doing, right? And then you have to think of, I need to be able to think of other plans, like an out. So you think of that icing guy, right, right? Did he think ahead of time of which airports that he could go to that were VFR? Obviously not, you know, because otherwise he would have been able to make that command decision and say, oh, I'm out, and then go ahead and ask for a vector to that particular airport to get out of those conditions. Um, there are a number of different things that we can talk about as far as that, uh, that flight is concerned, and, uh, that was probably one of them. So, uh, there's probably like three different things, and we'll talk about it in a minute, but there's, you know, like A, B, and C plan. A being the original plan, B being the alternate, right? So if you can't get to where you're going, and of course, C is, this is where you use your critical thinking skills and to be able to think of what-ifs along that flight if things go wrong, right? So it's just a matter of really taking a look at your plan before you go.
Let's see. Um, oh, so update. So I did do an update on this slide. So I use a slide because it's a great way to talk about the conversation of accuracy, but the real accuracy is actually pretty good. But it is limited. So, uh, I have the five-day forecast is listed, uh, at 90% accuracy, which is pretty awesome, right? So if you go to get that information, it's a pretty good chance things are going to work out that way. Um, but as you start to get past five days, it used to be three, now it's five. You start to get past five, it gets kind of muddier, right? So a seven-day forecast is around 80%, and then it kind of loses it when it gets to the 10-day, it's down to 50%, where you now are on that prediction where you just push a button to see what's going to happen. So it's not there yet, but it's slowly improving. And as technology and sensors get even more, you know, you know, as as we get more and more sensors in different areas to be able to predict stuff, you know, well, it's all good. And this stuff, it'd be great to have a long-term forecast that was accurate, right? Like if you're going to go on a trip for Thanksgiving or Christmas or something like that, or for whatever holiday that you're thinking about, uh, you can do that forecast.
Now that we're talking about forecasts, um, as pilots, what area does it cover? Now, we'll talk about how to read forecasts in a later time, but for this part, uh, for this lecture, I just want you to understand the area in which a Terminal Area Forecast covers. So we all know METARs are for local, you know, the, the airports, right? The stations that we want to get the information real-time, right now, that kind of stuff. Forecasts, on the other hand, are done by the local, uh, meteorologist at the flight service stations, and they give us, us, at least a snapshot of different periods of the day that they think the weather will be different. So when you see all the listings on a forecast, you'll see, uh, an initial weather, uh, statement, and then you'll see the forecasts that follow below it. And of course, if the weather, just like a persistence forecast, never changes, well, there'll be nothing below it. It'll just go to the next period, uh, of forecast. But of course, that's not the case because weather always changes, and you'll see other things down, down or below it. Um, but the forecast in and of itself only covers five statute miles. So I use this graphic at Santa Barbara because I just like the way it designs its C airspace, but don't look at it as airspace. In this case, I'm using it as an example to help you understand what, how big of an area that a forecast covers. So when you're look, you're doing your flight plan, right, and you pull up the forecast, you get it, and you're like, oh, looks like it's pretty good. You have to remember, it only covers that small little circle in the, the inner circle of that Class Charlie airspace. So five statute miles, that's all it covers. It doesn't cover anything else outside of it. So once you get, it's kind of like a test pilot thing, right? Once you get past that five-mile ring, you don't know what the weather is like outside of that ring. So that's why it's important. I mean, most of the time when you're using a Terminal Area Forecast, the purpose is to be able to prepare you for landing or taking off from that particular airport. So really, you know, it's the takeoff and landing part that you're really concerned with, and that's why you get that information. So you really only need about five nautical miles, but it doesn't tell you anything as far as like in-route or what generally speaking what the weather's like that is around it. We'll talk about how you can get that here in a second.
The other thing with a Terminal Forecast besides being restrictive to about five statute miles, if they want to expand it for whatever reason, whether it's like there's thunderstorms or something else in the weather they need to make sure you know of as a pilot, they have the terminal area vicinity. So what you'll see is that additional area that goes from five statute miles to 10 statute miles, right? And so now you have a much bigger area, but all they're going to tell you usually in that, uh, in the vicinity part of the, the TAF forecast is things that are a little bit different from what's contained within the regular terminal layer forecast, like there's thunderstorms or marine layers moving in or something that's important enough for them to add it to, uh, the vicinity, uh, storms rolling through that they anticipate during certain periods of time, that kind of stuff. But most of the time, remember, a Terminal Area Forecast is only five statute miles, and it's statute miles, not nautical miles, because that's what we see, and most weather is put out in a perspective that we would understand, at least in the United States, uh, to be able to figure out, like visibilities and that kind of stuff. All right. Um, so just remember the terminal forecast can kind of potentially give you a false sense of security of what the weather is going to be like in a particular area, like the LA Basin, right? So, because LA Basin is a pretty big area, and the weather can be different from one, one part of the basin versus the other.
So how do we get more detailed information from somebody who might kind of give us the weather in a way that we would understand? So, of course, there's a rhetorical question, and in this case, it's the Aviation Forecast Discussion. So this is like a hidden secret. So hopefully, if your CFI that you're working with has shown you this before, it's pretty awesome. If they have, just out of curiosity, you're working with, if you've seen this before, go ahead and put it in chat. Let me know that if your CFI is letting you know this exists. The neat thing about the Aviation Forecast Discussion is it takes all the information about the weather and, uh, it creates kind of a, a decoded weather observation that you can just read almost like a book or a story, you know, and it just tells you about the weather. It makes it so much easier to kind of understand what's happening. Like, if you want to know, you're going to fly today or tomorrow, and you're worried about the marine layer that's, or fog, uh, you want to know if it's happening. You could read a forecast and it's kind of yes, it's going to happen, or no, it's going to happen. Or if it's yes, it's going to happen, the question is, is well, how far inland is it going to go? Is it going to be thick? Is it going to be thin? Is it going to burn off? All that kind of stuff. The only way you can find that out is through the Aviation Forecast Discussion. So hopefully you guys can see this right now. That's Rapid City. Let's look at John Wayne Airport. And so a bunch of airports on the left-hand side, of course, the data for JWA is at the top, and then as you get below, there's, uh, there's about, what, there are five tabs: Info, Weather, Runway, all that kind of stuff. Well, we'll go to Weather. I'll select that, and of course, now it starts off with METARs because that's the immediate need usually that you'd like to have. And in this case, it shows seven minutes ago, it's still marginal at John Wayne Airport, and, uh, but it shows, don't forget, whenever they say marginal, like in this case, uh, it is the controller's version of marginal, right? So, I'm looking at the screen right now, it shows scattered 1600. Can we fly in scattered 1600? Yeah, we can fly in scattered 1600. We can fly, definitely fly in the pattern, um, and have a little bit of a cushion, which is nice. Um, and let's see if we can see anything else. It like even puts density out to do that for you. I know you guys are excited to learn about that. Um, anyway, so this is the information for the METAR. So we'll go down to the Terminal Area Forecasts, and as you can see, just by looking at this, this is worse than yesterday, where you see the red indicates, of course, IFR. That's kind of a no-brainer as far as the controller and you are concerned, unless you have, you know, an instrument, uh, rating, you can't, of course, fly there. Um, but it doesn't look like, just by looking at the red, uh, it's overcast. The worst-case scenario is 600 feet. So if you had an instrument rating, you'd be able to do an approach and get in because it goes down to about 200 feet, uh, on the ILS. But my point here, of course, when we're looking at the weather, is the forecast discussion. So if you look at that box that has all the weather in it, right below all the, the, the colored METARs, or the, I'm sorry, in this case, Terminal Forecast, you'll see a thing that says Forecast Discussion. So we can see it's kind of crappy weather. We click on that, uh, because this is ForeFlight, it eliminates a lot of the stuff that's above it, and it just gives us, uh, the aviation forecast. And for the most part, once you get a little bit more experience, that's all you're going to need. Just by looking at it, you can, it actually talks you through, uh, what you can expect. So it talks about fog locally, visibilities, and it tells you that it's going to gradually gain. In other words, it tells you what's going to happen to the weather instead of just looking at numbers and data, right? It talks you through it, which is pretty cool. Uh, and then you, of course, it talks about the marine stuff. But the other interesting thing is, if you scroll up now, if you just go through Aviation Weather Center, it'll actually start at the very top, and then you have to go down to the aviation, the apps just try to make it faster for you to do stuff.
All right, so look at the synopsis, and this is beautiful. So you're going to do a check ride, or you're going to talk to your, you know, your instructor about, you know, how you prepared for weather, right, for your flight. You can read this and use some of that data yourself, which is nice, right? So it, it tells you what, what the weather's actually doing in terms that you could actually comprehend, you know, instead of getting all technical and stuff. I mean, occasionally they have technical stuff, and you just look that stuff up as you go. But, um, it talks about fire conditions and wind and, and when they'll get stronger or weaker, that kind of stuff. So it's a great place to go to Aviation, uh, Forecast Discussion, and then when we get into AWC, I'll show you how to find that. It's really easy to do. So hopefully you didn't mind that little, uh, diversion from the lecture.
So it also includes all the information about vicinity, and the really neat thing about this is, as an example, if you're looking at, you know, forecasts that talk about thunderstorms in an area, you know, if you'd be concerned about, like, okay, well, that area is pretty big, you know, let's say if you're in Albuquerque, right? It's like, okay, all of Albuquerque covered with thunderstorms. Well, you can look at the Aviation Forecast Discussion, and it will tell you of the forecast, you know, we think that this sector or this sector, or they'll give you an area where they don't feel the thunderstorms are going to be an issue. They're going to be more focused over in another area. So that's what the area of forecast discussion will give you is it, or aviation forecast discussion, it'll tell you what they feel, you know, here's the alert area where they feel that actually the action is going to actually happen. So you can kind of avoid it by planning your flight around some of that stuff based upon more information, which is important. So just remember that one, Aviation Forecast Discussion, you might want to jot that down. Um, otherwise, we'll talk about it again when we start looking at the, the website itself. All right.
Low-level prognostic charts, as far as forecasting, this is great for VFR pilots, especially. Uh, it's for all pilots, but VFR pilots especially, because you can just look at this chart because it's, in this case, it's colored, um, and you have all these different figures and shapes and stuff like that, you can tell right off the bat whether or not you could fly in a particular area. So if you look at, uh, example, is there's two sides to this chart, right? So on the left-hand side, it's a 12-hour chart, on the right-hand side, it's a 24-hour chart. So just like a progression, you know, forecast, it's showing you this is what it is going to be like in 12 hours or for 12 hours, and this is what it's going to be like after that for 24 hours. So you can kind of get an idea of what the weather's going to be doing. You can see the red areas, of course, if you're not instrument rated, you're probably not going to fly in. You see the marginal, remember this is their version of marginal, not what the F's, uh, qualify for as part of pilots, um, but, uh, it's a great heads-up to get you prepared just in case. Occasionally, it could go from marginal to IFR. So that's one of the things that those critical thinking skills we have to have. Down at the bottom, of course, it has the legend that gives you the information to describe what those are. The reason why they have different shapes, shapes, um, and dash, different types of dashes, wavy lines, all that kind of stuff, is because this, uh, this chart can actually be shown in black and white. So you do not need color. Color just makes it way easier, but if you don't have color, as long as you know what these, uh, the, the shapes of these are of the phenomenon, you can figure out what it is pretty easy.
All right, uh, other things is this chart comes out every four hours. It's important for you to remember, every four hours, or four times, not four hours, four times a day, be more specific. Um, and that you're going to find out that a lot of charts that we use in aviation come out four times a day. Why is that important? Because you'll probably see test questions and stuff like that from me in the FAA, um, which will ask, well, how often does this chart come out? Oh, four times a day, right? So it lists the, uh, different times of the day, which are kind of cardinal directions or cardinal times, uh, in this case, like midnight, 6 o'clock, 12 noon, right? So you get an idea, it's, it's every 12, it's pretty, pretty straightforward. Um, but four times a day is an important number for you to remember. So, uh, that's low-level prognostic charts, of course, and, uh, which you can change the altitudes on them, uh, if you'd like through Aviation Weather Center, right?
Um, other things that you need to be now that we've kind of beat up forecasting a little bit, um, but there's certain components that we need to understand when we're flying airplanes to find out whether or not there's bad conditions that are possible, such as turbulence and icing and, and all sorts of other phenomena. So we have a way of warning us or get, you know, have the, the meteorologist give us a heads-up that there could potentially be a problem. So the first level of it is the AIRMETs. So there are three different types of AIRMETs, folks. We'll walk through each one. Hopefully, I'll give you a word or something to help you remind you what they stand for. Um, so Sierra, Tango, and Zulu are the names of all three of them. And the whole idea of these is to give you information that's important, uh, and it's important to, as you can see, it's important to all, all pilots, right? Will it affect people flying a small plane versus someone who's flying a large plane? Well, kind of like a small craft warning, uh, that they do in the, in for like the marine, like if you're going on the ocean and stuff like that, uh, this is kind of like our small craft warning, uh, for airplanes. So if you're in a smaller aircraft, you probably want to pay a little bit more attention to AIRMETs, um, than if you're flying something much bigger because most of the time, uh, because it's, it deals with moderate conditions, some of the bigger, faster stuff can handle some of those conditions. So it's not as much of an issue, but still, we all need to be aware of whatever those conditions are so that we can plan accordingly. So if you think of along the lines of, let's say, that 172 guy that was flying, that flying in the icing conditions, you know, most likely there was one of these out. So about the potential, this doesn't tell you if there's actual icing, but it tells you if there's a potential or a forecast for icing. So as you can see, it lists icing, turbulence, and IMC, and strong surface winds, such as like when we get Santa Anas and stuff like that, mountain obscuration, right, from, from upslope fog. And if you look down below that, how often does it come out? Every, every four, four times a day. Um, so just remember that it's pretty, pretty simple, and it could affect just a small area. So this is where those critical thinking skills come in again. Of course, we look at the AIRMET, you say, okay, look at the aircraft, or, you know, the, the forecast discussion, and see how much of that particular area that they're, you know, they've got colored off, uh, will be a bigger issue versus the others, right?
So walking through each of the AIRMETs to help you understand or remember, uh, what these are, we'll start off with AIRMET Sierra. So Sierra is a really important one for us to all understand, especially we're VFR pilots, because we want to know where the instrument meteorological conditions are so we can avoid them, right? How do we remember how to relate Sierra to IMC? Well, if you look out the window of that plane, if you were VFR, you know, what kind of comes to mind? Well, whoops, sorry, what comes to mind is these are shitty conditions. All right, it's probably the only time you'll hear me use a cuss word, but it gets the point across. So these are really crappy conditions. I can't fly, fly, uh, in these conditions as a VFR pilot. So how do I relate when I look at these, uh, these, uh, AIRMETs and remember that S stands for Sierra? Now you know. So it's just crappy conditions, uh, that normally you don't like to fly in, but the S needs to be able to relate so you can remember the stuff a little bit easier.
So the next one, of course, is Tango. Tango is the one that spills your coffee while you're flying along in the aircraft, and this deals with turbulence. So that one's easy, right? Turbulence, Tango. That one's super easy. Why they don't use it for the other one, I have no idea, but whatever, I don't make the rules. Um, but this deals with non-convective turbulence. Important to know the difference there. So all these, as you, as you'll see as I go through these three and then I start to go into the next section, uh, it's all related to non-convective turbulence or icing or whatever, whatever phenomena we're talking about, all right? Because it actually has its own separate one. So it's not for turbulence below the clouds, like I think I showed that one time where I was flying along in the Commander, showed you all the clouds I was flying above them, because of course, if you fly below those clouds, you'll get bumped around. Well, that won't be on, you know, as far as an AIRMET Tango, they won't issue that for for that type of turbulence, right? It's usually for something that's like, you know, uh, fronts coming through and some other reasons why they, they'd issue those. Santa Anas.
That kind of stuff. All right, so on the last one is AIRMET Zulu. So this is for moderate non-convective icing conditions and front, front, front passages or front passages and stuff like that. Um, the nice thing is, is of course, the lines are in blue. Those long lines, of course, show the altitudes in which they predict that icing will happen. And of course, they have these large areas where they, they definitely predict that icing is going to happen in these particular, particular areas. To be, uh, very, uh, conscious of it, and usually they put, uh, they do have, uh, altitudes associated with. You start to scroll in a little bit closer. So to help you remember, this is also using the same color and little blue Zulu. Uh, I was trying to figure out the, the actual Z in freezing. Uh, is there? So hopefully that helps. Freezing and AIRMET Zulu, you can connect the two to remember all three of them. And it's really important for you to remember all three of them because we're going to revisit them here in just a little bit.
So, so the next question would be, is where do we get our weather from? So we're all ready to go on a flight, right? So we've already looked at forecasting and AIRMETs and stuff. And where do we go to get our information to get the official information, right? So here's a hint. So it's important for you guys to recognize the very top, uh, where it says, "Where do we get?" And this is the important word, "official weather from?" So we can get our weather from propriety, different sources, right? We can get our weather from, you know, the, the news, we can get it from, you know, online, different places. But where do we get the official weather? Uh, 1800 Weather Brief, and of course, the number that's down below it. Uh, or is the one kind of the, the OG way to do it. Uh, down below it is one web.com, which is a newer way to do it that's run by Latos. And, uh, super easy to be able to get on that and get your information, get a standard weather brief, that kind of stuff. And of course, last would be the frequency that you would dial into your communications radio to be able to call Flight Service, which is 122.2. Maybe like 5,000 feet. You can dial that number in there and, uh, probably get Flight Service and, uh, you know, get what I kind, whatever kind of weather you'd like to have with one other weather brief.com. Only pilots can get this information. And the only reason why they can differentiate you from anybody else as a pilot is because you either are a student pilot or all the way up to like ATP, right? So as long as you have at least your student pilot certificate, you have now a number that you can put into this system, create a username, and, uh, start to use this as an official weather source to get your weather briefings from. So if you like using the internet, uh, they actually has more. Uh, if you go on to this site, it's kind of cool. Uh, there's a lot of information you can get. Aviation Weather Center is usually a little bit faster to be able to find stuff. Uh, but they're improving all the time, which is nice.
Just to make sure you guys retain some of this stuff, we're going to have a little quick quiz, right? So, and see if you can name off the three different types of AIRMETs. So you guys got that? Hopefully you remembered, uh, how to remember those terms. All right. And the next one is, who are AIRMETs published for? All pilots. Good answer. And the last one is, what are the three official ways that you can get a weather brief? All right, that is correct. We've talked about AIRMETs and we know there are three different types of AIRMETs. So is there anything worse than an AIRMET? Yes, they're called SIGMETs. And I worded this a little bit different to kind of help you understand the differences between the two. Now, when I talked about, uh, uh, not SIGMET, but AIRMETs, I said that, you know, might affect one type of plane versus another, right? Like smaller planes are probably more affected than the bigger ones. In SIGMET, I rewarded it so you understand that it's, it affects all aircraft. So it doesn't matter what you're flying. If this is out, out there, you don't want to fly in it. That's basically what it's telling you. This is just nasty stuff. So this is also, in this case, a SIGMET. A standard SIGMET, uh, is non-convective, just like all the AIRMETs, all the way up to this SIGMET. They are all non-convective. Now, it talks about severe greater than 300 square miles. We'll see what that looks like here in a second. And it includes, look at that, IFR, turbulence, and icing, just like the other ones. So it makes it easy to remember because they're all kind of the same, except this one, of course, is significant and it's one in which we all will pay attention to, regardless of who we are, what our experience is, and what type of equipment that we are flying. All right, so that's a standard SIGMET. There's one more to go, and that's a convective SIGMET. Now, when you hear the word convective, what do you guys think of? Hopefully you guys think of thunderstorms, right? Thunderstorms are so nasty, they get their own report. And, and so in this case, it shows different colors. So red is where the SIGMET actually is occurring at the time, and yellow is kind of their outlook or where they think or forecasting where this phenomenon might affect this particular area, depending on, you know, how it's moving. And a lot of times, of course, like if you look at the, uh, that red SIGMET that goes from like that part of Northern Texas, goes all the way up to the Great Lakes, kind of long, skinny. It's kind of like a, um, uh, line of thunderstorms, right? Uh, I just had a brain fart, so I'll think of it here in a second. A squall line is the what I was trying to remember. Uh, so this, let's say, would be a huge squall line, a bunch of thunderstorms all linked together, uh, which can definitely happen. And they're trying to figure out where that storm's going to go, right? This is an example, by the way, of where you would use the aircraft or the aviation forecast discussion if you were flying down in that part of, let's say, Texas, right? And you, let's say this Dallas is included in that yellow part, right? Well, you want to find out like, what are, like, is there a percentage of, like, is it going to, is it going to really happen? That's where you would look, use the forecast discussions to read about that particular area, and it would tell you, ah, you know, it's a warning area, but we don't anticipate anything happening there. It gives you a little bit more confidence as a pilot in making a decision whether or not you're going to fly or not. Anyway, moving on. Uh, this one, of course, as we remember when we talked about thunderstorms, especially air mass thunderstorms, that once they start, rain starts to come out of the, the bottom of them, and they become a thunderstorm, they usually only last around a couple of hours. And so that's when these reports come out. They're only good for a couple of hours. So this is a little different from the others. This one's two hours versus four times a day. And it's mainly because, think of it, it's unique, it's convective, it's a thunderstorm, and they don't last as long. Can they last longer? Absolutely. Um, but they just reissue another report continuing on from whatever that report was before, telling you, well, it's still crappy, and this is where the crappy parts are, and they'll go ahead and just issue another report. So this specifically talks about a line of thunderstorms, such as squall lines, greater than 60 miles long. So in other words, they, they want it long enough that it's going to affect especially smaller aircraft because, you know, you might not have the gas to be able to actually go all the way around. And so they want to make sure that, you know, you get a heads up ahead of time, this stuff's going to happen. Um, and of course, there's the area that 3,000, uh, statute miles with at least 40% coverage within that 3,000, uh, statute miles of that area. So trying to think of how big you think 3,000 square feet or square feet, square miles are, is sorry about that. And then the last one is embedded thunderstorms, like you're flying in IMC, so you're in the clouds, you can't, can't see anything, like that picture I showed of the instrument meteorological conditions, and you can't see the, the, the thunderstorm that's in front of you. It would be nice if they were to tell you that that was there. Now, of course, some of the aircraft today, you know, they have great radar and other ways of detecting them. Uh, but not everybody has radar. And so, uh, it's important for them to make sure that they issue these convective SIGMETs for those folks that don't have, uh, some of that equipment in their plane and might still be flying in instrument conditions. So that's one of the reasons why they create the SIGMET because you don't want to blunder into a, a thunderstorm, right? It's not very good. So 3,000, uh, square miles. So try to visualize in your mind what 3,000, uh, square miles looks like. Going to show you a picture of the United States, and then I'm going to show you, it's going to have an orange rectangle on it that I will show you how big 3,000 square miles is. It's not that big. So, uh, amazingly, I don't know what you guys are thinking, you know, as far as how big, I originally thought 3,000 square miles, dude, I mean, you know, coast to coast, right? Well, of course, this is square miles and as far as area. So, uh, it's not very big. But, and only 40% of that needs to be covered in convective, uh, stuff to be able to be issued a SIGMET. So I put a little, uh, uh, some reminders on this slide as you're studying it later. And of course, down on, uh, the red down at the bottom, uh, important things like no single cells. In other words, uh, they won't get SIGMETs for, let's say, the summer thunderstorms that we get over like Palm Springs or or Big Bear or something like that, that there just won't be a SIGMET for it. It's there, uh, it'll be in the regular weather, but they won't issue a SIGMET for something like that. They will for huge superstorms or, you know, the supercell storms, and of course, the ones in longer lines.
All right, so once you, you figured out, you look at the SIGMET, you see where all the storms are and stuff like that, and you figure, okay, well, where are they going? Like, you're trying to figure out, you had that one picture where it kind of anticipates through the warning areas, you know, it kind of gives you a heads up where it might go. But you're, as a, as a pilot, you actually want a little bit, like you want to be a little bit more specific. So how do we figure out where the storms are going? We look at the winds aloft. So based upon those winds, of course, that's what's pushing it, and you'll be able to tell or have a better idea of the directions of the storms and, and, uh, because it could make a big difference depending on where you're taking off or landing from, right? You can be able to predict time and how long it's going to take the storm to move, all that kind of stuff. Uh, a lot of the current apps are great as far as giving projections. Sometimes they put them right on the storm. They'll attach an arrow to each one of the thunderheads and then give you an arrow, the direction in which it's going, very handy. Um, but, uh, sometimes you just don't have access to that kind of stuff. And so have to use go old school with the actual winds aloft chart, uh, which just gives you a bunch of numbers. And then of course, the newer version of it, which is graphical down below, which shows the wind barbs, right? So it's velocity, plus direction. So if we were to look at the chart above, uh, if you've never looked at one of these before, uh, there's a lot of data in there. And, uh, if you look at the top, of course, it kind of gives you the beginning part of the chart, telling you what it is and how long it's good for. But right below it, it gives you feet. So it shows you 3,000, 6,000, 9,000, 12,000. You go all the way across, it gives you altitudes, okay? On the left hand side, as you go all the way down in, uh, in that, uh, that column, it shows you the airports that are associated with those winds. So to find out what the winds are in Southern California at 3,000 feet, we look under 3,000, we go straight down, we find something in Southern California, which would be like Ontario, right? And it says 230 at 5. So, uh, the winds are 230 degrees at five knots, pretty simple. It does not have the extra numbers, though, if you notice at 3,000 feet. So if we cross to the next one at 6,000, so we look at an Ontario and we go under 6,000, it shows 2612 + 09, right? So that's a 260 as far as the degrees, uh, 12 knots, and it gives you the temperature is plus 2 degrees Celsius. So that's what all the numbers mean. And then of course, when you get to a certain altitude, it's just cold. So they don't put the minus anymore, as you can tell from 30,000 feet above, uh, they don't put a minus because it's just, it's always minus up there. So, uh, they don't even bother. Uh, but it's all the same information if you read it all the way across. The only thing you need to make, that, that is a little bit different is the numbers when the wind speed gets above 100 knots. So in other words, let's say, um, like the jet stream or something like that, right? So when the wind speed gets above 100 knots, they actually have to change the numbers on the written chart. That's, uh, you know, on that in the upper section. So if you go all the way over to 34,000 feet, which is the second to last column, go all the way down to the bottom to make this easy, you notice that the numbers is 7 2357. So if you were reading this just straight out, read it, that would mean 720 degrees, that's weird, at, uh, three knots at 57 degrees, because everything's negative up there, right? Well, last time I led a compass, only went to 360 degrees, right? So that's wrong. And that's your initial heads up. If it doesn't make sense, it's because you need to do a conversion. So a conversion, I put down in the lower left hand corner of the slide. It's pretty simple. So instead of 720, right, for the direction, just minus 50 from it. So 50 minus, or 72 minus 50 gives you 22, so that's 220. And then you add a 100 to whatever the wind speed is. The wind speed shows it at 03 or three knots. Well, it's actually 103 knots. So that's where you can tell the difference. If you see a weird number in the front, such as a seven, anything greater than a three, you're going to go, what? So, uh, do the conversion. It's pretty simple. Why they don't make it regular, you know, you know, like normal stuff? It's the FAA. I think they just out to like mess with us. So I mean, it's 2021, you figure they, it fixes by now, but hey, it is what it is. And, and I, I don't think they want to change the printers or something, I don't know. Anyway, so that's how you make the change. Uh, it's really important for you to know the conversion, of course, because you might see that on a test on how to do that. Uh, let's see if there's anything else. Oh, if you want to make sure that you're doing the conversion properly, like if you space out and forget the minus 50, you're like, ah, the simple thing is, is to start looking to the left or right. Usually go to the left, right? And you'll see the direction. If you notice all the directions, uh, until you get lower in altitude, right? Uh, or if you go just the one to the left of that big number, it's also 22, right? So there's your hint. Uh, if something doesn't work out or you don't understand it, usually when you get, you know, to the higher altitudes, especially, uh, there's less of a friction issue, right? So you, they're going to be pretty consistent as far as direction. So you know, look off to the side and it'll give you a hint. Uh, if you forget the minus 50, plus 100. All right, if you can remember the minus 50 by doing that, you'll, you're good to go. So there's your cheat sheet way of checking it out. Uh, anyway, so now that we're finished looking at, uh, you know, the winds at Yakima, Washington, let's give you a real-time view of what it looks like when you're flying an aircraft. That aircraft I showed, that Cessna Citation that had those three different types of de-icing equipment, the electric, the boots, and the heated windshield and stuff, that's this plane's. It's not its current avionics, but this is what it was when we were flying it that day. And in this particular case, you can see that, uh, it should be flying the true airspeed, right? Is this plane should be trucking along at 355 knots, which is awesome. But we have a headwind, as you can see, just by looking at it, 155 knots straight on the nose. And unfortunately, it slowed us down a little bit. So, uh, the reason why I bring this one up and show you these numbers is because when we got the forecast, excuse me, and the current winds aloft, it showed a 90 knot headwind. So from the current winds aloft chart, it said 90. When we got up into the atmosphere and we're flying the aircraft, it turned into 155 knots, which means we had to divert because we couldn't go direct anymore, which was kind of a bummer. But anyway, uh, this just goes to show you that, you know, even though you got the right data and it's a current data, you know, things change.
All right, so, uh, other things. So just want to put this into your head ahead of time because we're going to talk about more of them later. Uh, the three different, or the, I'm sorry, the four different types of briefings, uh, that you can get, uh, official weather briefings that you can get, uh, from the service stations, whether you call them or go online. And there's, uh, I put them in the order in which you normally would get them. Uh, so the first one, of course, is an Outlook briefing. So more than six hours before you do your actual flight, uh, this is what you're going to get. Works out pretty good for the most part. Uh, like if you're going to fly tomorrow and you want to know, is, you know, I'm going to fly at 11, is the marine layer going to be an issue, right? You can call Flight Service, uh, through one and another brief, and just ask them, say, can I have an Outlook briefing for? And then you give them all the information that they want. Uh, typically, it's, you use your flight plan to give them the information and, uh, go ahead and get an Outlook briefing. Outlook briefing, you usually don't have to give them all the stuff, just, just generic, like where you're going to take off from, all that kind of stuff. Then there's the Standard Weather Briefing. That's kind of the big dog of the whole thing. Uh, this is where you get all the information for your flight from point A to point B, uh, takeoff, landing, en route weather, in the corridor in which you're going to be flying, that kind of stuff. This is a great weather briefing. Um, so from the Standard Weather Briefing, uh, you, there, there's, uh, two other ways in which you can get your weather. So let's say you get your Standard Weather Briefing, you're all good to go, and you're like, okay, uh, my passengers will show up any minute. Well, you know, welcome to waiting for passengers and charter and the airlines and everything else, right? You look at your watch, you're like, uh, they should have been here by now, but they're not here. So you call them up and, or whatever, and, uh, you find out that they're going to be like an hour late, right? Well, an hour later, do you have to get a whole new Standard Weather Brief? No, you don't. So all you have to do is call them up and get an abbreviated briefing. And the nice thing about the abbreviated briefing is it just gives you an update on things that had changed. So in other words, it doesn't change your whole, you don't have to go through the whole darn thing all over again. It just tells you, oh, the winds have changed to this, uh, the marine layers, they think the marine layer is going to come in earlier, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they give you all the updates that are different from the original one. So they're anticipating or, or assuming that you still have all your data from the original Standard Weather Brief, and they're just updating the info. And if there's nothing to update, then we'll just tell you. Um, and then of course, there's the In-Route Flight Advisory Service, right? So this, 122.2. Um, but this is some basic information about what it is, right? So there's the definition for it. It's the Terminal Area Forecast, or not forecast, but the information service that you get from the tower. Most of the time, it's automated now. So you'll hear it on, you know, that that computer recording, or it can actually be transcribed and said over the radio, usually recorded, of course, from whoever's working the weather station if they have an approved weather person there to give out the ADIS. In this case, it is a dedicated frequency, which is nice because as you're preparing to flight, you hop inside the airplane, and you just want to get the current ADIS. You go ahead and you look at the communications area, or the information box for that airport, and within all that information, they'll have an actual frequency for you to dial in and just listen to, uh, what the current weather is. It usually lasts for about an hour. When they get it, uh, it's issued every 5 to 10 minutes before the top of the hour, and it refreshes all the time. Every time it the weather refreshes, they give you a new letter. So like Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, that kind of stuff. Every time it's changed, regardless of if it's on every hour, if there's not much change, or if they have to amend it, do a special or whatever, they have to issue something between. It will always have a different letter identifier attached to it. Um, the only reason why I say this is because when you're coming in, especially when you're coming into an airport, and you receive the ADIS, sometimes you'll need to, you'll need to ask what they'll ask you, what ADIS that you have? And you'll say, I'm coming into John Wayne, I have information Alpha. Well, if they've updated it since you originally, let's say, if you got it like 20 or 30 miles out, and they changed it during that time, they'll say, well, information Bravo is now current. And they either expect you to get it, or you can ask them for it, depending on how close you are to the airport. Sometimes they ask you, well, you know, call me back when you have the current ADIS. And you're like, lining up for final. You say, no, no, no, you're pilot in command. So now why don't you go ahead and give me what the current weather is? And you can do that with air traffic control. That's part of their job to get you into the airport. But, uh, you know, if you do have the time, though, go ahead and switch frequencies and get it really quick. You usually, it can have both frequencies up at the same time, so you can still hear both the ADIS and the controller at the same time. You see if I'll show you how to do that. All right, so other things you need to know. That's pretty much it as far as a broad overview of what ADIS is. Um, so think of a scenario, uh, in this case, I, I'll create one for you. We're flying from Las Vegas to John Wayne Airport. And of course, before we leave, Las Vegas, we need to get the ADIS from there. Go ahead and take off. As we're about 20, 30 miles before we get into John Wayne Airport, we'll get the ADIS coming into John Wayne Airport. So that would be the ADIS. And let's, so this is a little bit different from what we just did before. You'll notice, uh, in this case, we have San Marcos. San Marcos is highlighted here. It shows the same type of box. So San Marcos has the frequency 14.9, the military one, the identifier, and then of course, the Morse code. So everything's exactly the same as the other one, but there is a difference, as you can tell, because there's numbers at the top and a name down at the bottom. So everything outside of this box is a, something allows you to talk, in other words, communicate with somebody. So when we're talking about weather, and you want to get an update to your weather, we know that one of the official ways to get it is by dialing in 122.2. Maybe 5,000 feet, right? So if you're above 5,000 feet, most likely you're going to get them. But what happens if you're in an area where you're close to 5,000 feet and you're still not getting them? Well, you look for one of these. And in this case, it has two frequencies at the top. The one on the right hand side, right above the HIWAS, is like a backup frequency to 122.2. And stuff like that. That frequency will most likely work better than the standard, you know, 122.2. Is this one? And if that doesn't work, you're like, oh my God, seriously, doesn't work. I can't get a hold of them. Well, there is one more way. So in this case, there's another frequency on the left hand side that's unique and it has an R next to it. So that just tells you when you're using this frequency, it's being used in a different way. So how it's being used is kind of think of, um, think of a cell phone tower. So when we use our cell phones, you know, we dial up a number, and what happens? Well, of course, this gets transmitted to a tower somewhere, and from the tower, it goes through landlines to another tower that transmits to whoever you're trying to call, right? Or text or whatever. So in this case, you dial in that frequency, service via the, like the landlines, of course, and that's it. It ends there for them. But it kind of works similar to a cell tower in that way, where communication is going from the air to a land-based unit. So you're just basically like repeating, which is awesome. So you dial in a 122.1, say Flight Service, Cessna 234, need a weather update. And they're going to answer you back. Here's where the difference is. How do you hear that them? Well, it's not a cell phone, you have to use the VOR to hear them. In other words, to hear them, what do we do to hear on a VOR? Well, we have to pull or push that knob on the navigation radio to be able to hear the dots and dashes, the HIWAS or Flight Service. So I see how they're kind of all linked together. So in other words, you call them on one frequency, the 122.1, and you listen as they talk back to you through the VOR. Make sure your volume's up high enough so you can actually hear them, right? And then you can communicate back and forth, just like that. Once it's established, it's super easy. Now, how do you go through the process? Um, so here's a little bit more information. Below 5,000, this is what the R stands for. You start off the conversation with Hawthorne Radio. So that's the reason why the name is at the bottom of this, because this is the name that's attached to the area in which you're flying. So when you call Flight Service, instead of just calling, you know, like ATC, you call ATC, right? Like SoCal Approach or LA Center or whatever. In this case, you're going to say, Hawthorne Radio, this is Cessna 1234, uh, at San Marcos VR, I want to get updated weather as I'm flying to John Wayne Air from Vegas or whatever, right? But you start off with Hawthorne because that name will attach it to a briefer, uh, in Flight Service that is in your area. In other words, the local guy that's working that day in that area, and it'll have all the local weather that you need to be able to finish your flight or get the most updated stuff. If you don't say it that way, and you just say San Marcos, they'll have to look it up, or if they're not sure exactly where you're at, they might, it just might create more time that you're trying to communicate. And believe me, sometimes trying to communicate with Flight Service is not the clearest. If you guys have watched that video already on them trying to communicate, it's, it's kind of scratchy sometimes, or the identifier thing goes on top of it, it's really annoying. Um, but it works, but in a pinch. Anyway, so all we start off with Hawthorne to make sure you get the proper person. And, uh, you remember, you talk on 122.1. Cessna 234 over. [Music] They're in an area where the mountains are higher or whatever the case might be, and the communications don't work really well, right? This is always your backup to a backup, right? This is just a shot of Garmin 430 radio that gives you, shows you the frequencies on kind of the left hand side of that screen. The top parts are the comm, or the communications where you talk, and then the bottom is the navigation side of the radio that you would be enabled to listen to the, to the control or, uh, Flight Service.
All right, so hopefully you guys aren't too confused by that description. And, uh, it's one of those things you need to practice to remember how to do it. And if you go out on your some of your cross countries, try it. And because you just got to experience it at least a couple of times, and you'll find out Flight Service is not like ATC. Sometimes it's kind of a little clunkier. ATC is more straightforward, where Flight Service is a little bit more relaxed. And then sometimes you have to wait in line, you know, because they might be talking to somebody else before you. So you might have to be a little patient before they can get to you. So anyway, so to make sure that you guys understood that we, what we've been talking about, we will finish off with three questions and see if you guys can answer if you guys are still awake. And what are the two primary categories of SIGMETs? Right on. That is perfect. All right, next one, real quick. How do we get airport information or en route information when I'm in the air? And now think broadly. This is doesn't necessarily mean weather, just airport information or en route information when you're in the air. ADIS is one. Flight Watch is another. So that's the few. It's probably the most common ones that you use, you know, uh, when you, as far as weather. The first three, Flight Service, CAP, of course, you can call on that and try and get. You probably won't get any weather information. But in UNICOM, UNICOM is an example like, uh, Big Bear or Avalon or Catalina, same kind of thing. You can get some basic information from them when you're coming in, like runway use and and possible weather and stuff, but it's unofficial, right? All right, when calling Flight Service, what name do you announce to make sure that you get the proper briefer in your area when you're communicating over the VOR? That is correct. Down at the bottom, below it's a name underneath the VOR information. It's important to remember to use that one. You can use the VOR, it'll work, but sometimes it, it delays you getting your information. Like most of the time when you want to get this information, you kind of want to get out of the way, you want to get the information and kind of move on to the next thing. Um, and so if you don't give it to them in the way that they want to hear it, it just unfortunately delays the process. So that's the tip. That's what the, uh, examiners would like to hear. I was like, oh yeah, I'll just use Hawthorne Radio, Cessna 1234 over San Marcos, you know? So not only will you tell them the sector you're working, but actually specifically a part of. So whoever Hawthorne Radio is that's identified with a person, they'll know that person will know where San Marcos VR is. So it's all good stuff, just makes life a lot easier for you when you're trying to get that information.
Well, that is it. So we're not going to drone on any longer. I actually got this one done a little faster than I did on Tuesday. And I'll leave you with this shot of a hurricane hunter getting washed after flying through a bunch of salty hurricane stuff. So I just like to get your car washed that way, right? Crazy.