Need weather, but stuck in a field ?

[The Nr Fairy]

I did check the archives - last time this was mentioned was about 3 years ago, and seeing as helicopter pilots are the most likely to end up in a field miles from the Internet with nothing but a mobile phone, thought it was worth reposting.

A nice man in a Twin Squirrel showed me on Sunday (thanks Will, and it was fine back to Shoreham) how to get TAFs and actuals anywhere you have a mobile phone signal.

Text an airfield code to +45 40606361 (Sonofon) or +45 26122275(Orange) and in a minute or so you get a METAR or TAF back. 10 free texts to try it out, after that it costs about 10 - 12 pence per text.

See www.wxsupport.com for full details.

[Martin1234]

An even better option is to gear your WAP browser to;

http://www.flyklubben.org/wap.wml#taf

It gives you current metar and taf for Europe.

[Fortyodd]

or, direct your wap browser to:
http://www.avbrief.com/wap.wml
and enter the ICAO for the airfield you require. METARs, TAFs and Long TAFs available.

[teeteringhead]

The Met Office also do a "civilian" (sorry - I mean non-aviation) type text forecast system.

Text "wthr4" followed by a placename or a UK postcode to 82222 (within UK) and you'll geta 6 hour forecast. Can be useful for passage of fronts/estimated clearances etc. And also for the non-aviation type uses for which it was probably designed......

[SASless]

In most parts of my flying area it would have to be a SAT Phone....cell coverage gets rather slim around here once you leave the main valley.

[Bravo73]

A couple of more TAF/METAR WAP sites for the UK:


http://sunplan.com/AvWx.wml#Main
http://fly.dsc.net/wx.wml



B73

[helicopter-redeye]

Sonofon, .... we have to text Denmark for UK weather ??

[Giovanni Cento Nove]

Sonofon, .... we have to text Denmark for UK weather ?

Why not? You talk to someone in India to make a BA reservation. Which rock you been living under?

[EESDL]

I've used www.ukga.co.uk in the past.

[helicopter-redeye]

You talk to someone in India to make a BA reservation. Which rock you been living under?

Talk to?

I user the web site

:8 :8

[delta3]

And where do you think the web server is located ....

[Floppy Link]

Belgium ?

:E

[imabell]

tierra del fuego

[Head Turner]

Just tried the 82222 link and the result is not adequate for my needs as it said little to base a safe flight on

[Ed Thrust IV]

Try Birmingham met office on 0121 717 0580. A very nice lady or gent will read you TAFs and actuals for where ever you want in English, 24hrs a day, seven days a week for free. It doesn't get much better than that.

[aspinwing]

Try this site for a system that you can use to download METERs & TAF plus e-mail and have your position available inline (with appropriate security)

Arosmart (http://www.arosmart.com/)

Forget about using phones and besides the usage fees are cheaper than satphones.
:cool:

[The Nr Fairy]

Interesting link, but it doesn't work if you don't have it ?

Pretty much anyone has a mobile phone, and a large proportion of those are WAP-capable.

[jellycopter]

Interesting thread. I recently acquired a PDA/Phone (o2 Xda2). It's configured to access the internet through GPRS. Does anyone out there know of a web-site that just publishes raw text data for TAFs and METARs?

I'm able to access the UK Met Office web site but it's not configured for the small screen on the PDA plus you have to go through several pages before you can get the info you want. This adds unnecessary data and therefore cost when using the GPRS system.

I'm a bit of a techno-phobe so please try to keep any replies jargon-free. (It's taken me a couple of weeks to work out what GPRS is!)

Cheers, J.

[Bravo73]

Jellycopter,

Yes. See my post above.

(And although I've never used one of those O2 PDAs, I imagine that it's a similar system to my WAP phone. Under the 'Go to address' option, enter the urls above.)


Kind regards,

B73

[gps_kiddie]

This company can get you your weather inforamtion, METAR and TAF, even when you travel outside cell phone range.

http://www.commversat.com/

[headsethair]

For the UK, weatherweb.net is bit better than avbrief because it has an ICAO encoder/decoder list. Very quick on gprs.