Need Flightplanning advice please

[PrivatePilotDA40NG]

Hi to all,

Need some Flightplan/Weather advice :confused:

I am flying from EBOS Ostend to EDDV Hannover on 30/09. Takeoff at 0700UTC.
Having checked the weather, it doesn't look too good around Hannover. What do you think?
The aircraft is a Cirrus SR22. Will be able to cruise FL150 if neccesary.

Can I expect solid cloud from ground to 100 or can I fly inbetween layers and avoid? I have included the prognostic vertical soundings for 0600 and 1200.

LINK :

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vldba4k572zjj2n/AADjLGwldpxYtSX-ljwIp53Qa?dl=0

Thanks in advance, I'm not that much of a meteorologist...

[dirkdj]

Do you fly IFR or VFR. I would start looking at the weather the day before departure, look first at the general situation, fronts, H/L pressure areas, type of air mass, stability, etc. Late in the day before departure look at the TAFs. The TEMPs you posted on dropbox are forecasts, not actual soundings of the day.
Many moons ago I plotted the weather charts for the forecaster at EBFN.

[PrivatePilotDA40NG]

the flight will be flown under IFR

[Steve6443]

Unfortunately you will be in solid IMC all the way from FL 150 down to around 2000 feet. It's a pity really because until the German border the weather should be clear, crossing the border into Germany you'll have an overcast around 4000 feet up to FL 65 and this will remain pretty much the same until you get near Buckeburg where it becomes pretty much overcast right the way up to FL140, possibly due to the Weser Bergland.

Having said that, at the moment it looks like you could fly between the cloud levels if you were to look at arriving around 12 UTC - then it's showing you'd have an overcast between 2000 - 3500feet, FL 50 - FL70 and FL140 to FL150.

But the situation could change tomorrow.... this is just what I see from the DWD website......

[Jonzarno]

One weather site that is worth a look is Gramet:

Form to request gramet aero (http://www.ogimet.com/gramet_aero.phtml.en)

You put in the departure and arrival airports separated by an underline so in your case EBOS_EDDV, enter the departure time and flight level and it gives you a picture of the forecast for your route.

The data is taken from the GFS model and I have always found it to be pretty good.

Looking at the route and time you give, it looks OK and you even have a nice tail wind!

For icing forecasts, I use Jetplan

JetPlan.com Graphic Weather (http://www.jetplan.com/jeppesen/weatherServlet?&action=show&graphicType=wxMapPrevG&img=euicall12.gif:15:euic:.gif:250,200,150,100,050,010,upr,l ow,all:250-300,200-250,150-200,100-150,050-100,010-050,150-300,010-150,010-300:010:12,18,24:12,18,24)

Obviously, you need to review the forecasts as the time of your flight approaches.

[PrivatePilotDA40NG]

Thank you both. The gramet forecast looks pretty good indeed.
Guess I'll see tomorrow night =) thanks for your help.

[piperboy84]

That gramet/ogimet site is the absolute dogs bollox for showing the weather.

[Jonzarno]

It also occurs to me that thunderstorms can be a problem at this time of year (although not shown on the Gramet for the flight in question) and this site is a very good real time lightning indicator:

Blitzortung.org ? lightning map Europe ? thunderstorms and lightning strikes (http://www.blitzortung.org/Webpages/index.php?lang=en)

At the time of posting there's not a huge amount of activity but it's well worth looking at before flying if there is a chance of storms.

And while I'm at it, here's an infra red cloud tops site that gives an animation of how the clouds have been moving and a very short term forecast of where they will be in the next hour or two. You can also tick a box to get it to show lightning activity:

http://www.sat24.com/en/eu

[PrivatePilotDA40NG]

THX Jonzarno. Forecasts looking good now , thx :)

[Skeeve]

So, did you execute the planned trip?
How did the actual weather compared to the forecast (especially ogimet)?

[PrivatePilotDA40NG]

@Skeeve

Pretty nice flight actually. Took off 0600UTC, landing 0720UTC. I cruised at FL120 and I got more or less direct route shortcut.

As forecasted, there was an overcast at 500ft with tops 1500-2000ft. then there were some scattered layers between FL080 and FL110 These were not on the ogimet but flugwetter.de had these on it.

Also, as forecasted by flugwetter.de, and late on Monday evening on a new gramet, between Osnabruck and Hannover, I got some TCU. Overcast around 1000ft, low vis and some towering up to FL130 but there were only 2 TCU in vicinity and 1 large TCU in the far distance (easy avoid) so I got a vector which passed a TCU but no problem.

I think the gramet is pretty good, also it predicted TCU until FL100 in arrival in Antwerp which was spot on.
So if you take into account the gramet and then another source of forecast and both are pretty good for your flight, there should be no problem :)

[Fly-by-Wife]

I'm not that much of a meteorologist...
Please don't take this the wrong way, but don't you think that you should consider improving your grasp of meteorology so that you are less reliant on the advice of others upon which to base your go - no-go decisions?

You seem to be quite advanced (planning IFR flights in high-performance aircraft) not to have an equally sound grasp of interpreting weather forecast.

FBW

[Skeeve]

Thanks for the report.

Much appreciated.

[IRpilot2006]

At 19, must be the youngest ever SR22 pilot in Europe! Impressive!

[dirkdj]

As we all have found out, what is learned for the TK exams does not prepare us for serious IFR flight planning. When I was doing my IR 40 years ago, you had to have 200 hours before being allowed to do the flight test. Once you had the rating, there were very few rated pilots around to ask advice and we did not have forums such as this or http://www.ppl-ir.org that cater specifically for IR related questions such as equipment, met planning, route planning and much more.
I have played mentor for two newly rated IR pilots, and they learned new things on each and every flight. It is a license to learn.
I am very glad the OP asked questions, made the flight as planned and analysed it afterwards. This is a sign of maturity not of weakness.