Weather

[Fuji Abound]

Simple .. .. ..

why has no one got around to Nexrad cockpit weather in Europe

.. .. .. is it just money, and not enough pilots willing to pay?

[IO540]

They have...

http://www.moving-terrain.de/en/index_en.htm

This uses a weird sort of customised table computer, with (AFAIK) a GSM (GPRS/3G) modem for ground connectivity, and an off the shelf cable connected satellite phone for airborne connectivity.

They have a deal with the European weather data cartel (the UK Met Office and its equivalents) for near real time weather radar.

They have a server with some airways routing software and a gateway of some sort into Eurocontrol so they can generate airways routings which are immediately flyable.

It's a slick system; in many ways an implementation of a pretty obvious requirement in the European IFR market.

Unfortunately they don't do a software-only product i.e. something you could run on your own hardware, and they have a high entry level of about £5000.

So, one can do it, but using straight TCP/IP (internet) over the 38.4k satellite phone data link, rather than the dedicated data network which Nexrad uses in the USA.

The problem is the very small European private IFR population - probably under 1000 active pilot/owners.

They appear to have sold a fair few to professional users, notably some helicopter ops.

Their market is limited at the top end because anything half decent has its own weather radar which has to be better for tactical CB avoidance than even a few mins of delay which MT offer.

[Genghis the Engineer]

If you have pocket flymap on a GPS+PDA you can download real time weather (and NOTAMS) from a couple of subscription services - I think the weather may come from the German service mentioned above.

Not having used either however, please don't ask me how they compare - I've no idea!

G

[IO540]

It's trivial to get metars and tafs while airborne; at low levels one can use SMS and high up you can get an internet connection via a sat phone.

But I think Fuji was referring to "real time" (which means different things according to how much you pay) weather radar data.

There is the great new Meteox (http://www.meteox.com)and one could receive this via a sat phone and display it on a tablet or a 320x240 PDA, but this is delayed by ~ 30 mins so of little use for tactical TS avoidance. Even if you did find a way to superimpose the aircraft position onto the image accurately.