Inflight Weather
 

Hi all

I have searched and either I'm terrible at searching (a distinct possibility) or this hasn't been asked. Apologies if I've missed it.

Can any Australian pilots give me some useful advice on receiving weather, winds aloft, weather radar etc. at higher altitudes where there is no mobile reception. My aircraft has an XM subscription which is great for the US but useless here. No Garmin avionics, it's an IS&S system so something handheld that feeds the iPad would be what I'd need.

As an example, I was cruising along at FL360 the other day, beating into 120kt headwinds (80 more than forecast) and only had 2 hour old data on my iPad so didn't know if I should try higher or lower,

Is there a way to achieve this reliably that doesn't cost a bomb?

And as an aside, why don't we get XM in Australia?

Thanks in advance.

Mate...........you're in Australia, not a first world country.

Be thankful you had a 2-hour-old forecast. There's hundreds of airfields out here that don't even get a forecast, yet alone a decent TAF. But to answer your question, so far as I'm aware, there's nothing available to us down here like you can get in the US. No uplinked NEXRAD, no FIS-B'd METAR's, down here there's zero, zip, nada!

About your only possible option would be some kind of SATCOM/Iridium data subscription to access the latest BOM winds-aloft charts, but even then, they can be upto 3 hours old.

FYI
this used to help
but need wifi https://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-ti...hr&zoom=&time=

Sounds like you need a navigator, old buddy!

Are you seriously telling me that the "continuous intellectual pursuit" that I was told was modern piloting is simply you sitting there waiting for your "XM subscription" to tell you what to do next?

Please advise for who you work, so I can avoid booking your airline.

Sounds like you need a new flight plan provider!

Don't worry, I'm tipping you wouldn't get within a hundred feet of this bloke's aircraft.

Welcome to one of the few developing countries where it is safe to drink the tap water.

If you need REAL TIME wind updates I suggest the only option is calling other aircraft.

I find that our flight plan winds are accurate and provide options above and below our planned crusing level.

As mentioned above, check with your flight planning service.

Two things,
1/. ATC have GRIB winds available through Eurocat which are routinely updated, and they could ask other aircraft operating at different levels in the vicinity.
2/. Did you tell ATC? PIREP so that BOM would receive an update.

In general, the higher you go, the stronger the winds. I thought anyone who flies in the flight levels would know that by experience?

Have you considered changing your handle to “Mr Approachable”?

I fly for myself, often by myself, and as “tossbag” stated, there’s slim likelihood of you ever getting anywhere near my aircraft so consider my airline successfully avoided!

I’ll happily take odds on that!

My experience is limited but growing, helped in part by the useful replies on this forum! In general you are correct, but not always, and I would have thought that anyone who comments on here would also know that fuel burn changes with altitude, so having accurate and timely information would be very useful.



Many thanks, I’ll check it out.

What do you use for flight planning software? We use an iPad based app at my work and it’s generally pretty accurate

Yes, concur with morno. The flight planning software I use at work is also quite accurate for both ETI's between waypoints and fuel burns based on forecast winds.

I miss the good old days of paper planning. :(

Thank you Missy. Stupidly, I did not tell ATC, I should have.

I’m using AvPlan, what do you use at work?

Adam, to answer your last question. Even XM weather in the US market is not economically viable. XM piggyback their wx service on the back of the more lucrative XM Music subscription service. Such a music service would not be viable in Australia based on satellite.

That’s interesting, thank you.

The only GA unit I know of is a Garmin GSR56 which enables the following (quoted from the website)

I have used this - but the plans are very expensive

Funnily enough we use AvPlan. Can’t work out why your winds would have been so far out apart from dodgy weather info from BOM.

Adam,

Could the error have been an incorrect UTC/local departure time and date and therefore giving you the wrong data set?

Possible, I suspect user error is the most likely scenario!

Or a dodgy user....me! Thanks for your reply.

You need an internet access in your aircraft, either via ground cell networks, or via satellites.
In both cases you will need an external antenna with amplifier attached to the wifi modem/router which will broadcast data to your ipad/phone.
I would try with 4g/lte modem with high gain external antenna positioned on the windows.


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That's an excellent suggestion, thank you!

Now ya ruined it! I could have taken the flogs money on a sure thing!

Hahaha, I'm sure there'll be other opportunities!