Who Subsribes To Additional Met Services ?

[LateFinals]

Every time I log onto the met site to get the weather I am offered the chance to upgrade for enhanced services for a mere £56 ! I find the basic service quite adequate but wonder if I am missing anything and whether the extra info would make a big difference to flight planning.

Feedback from any pilots who have used this extra service would be appreciated.

LateFinals

[S-Works]

I pay for it, gives you quite a bit of extra stuff especially useful for airways planning.

[IO540]

Can you describe the extra stuff, bose x, and how it is useful for airways flights?

[S-Works]

Rainfall radar - British Isles and Europe

Lightning observations

European synoptic charts -
colour animation or black & white printable

British Isles synoptic analysis

Visible satellite pictures

Infrared satellite pictures

Flight-level wind and temperature charts

Significant weather charts


Three-day planner - S England/S Wales,
N England/N Wales and Scotland

[TheOddOne]

I subscribe to avbrief.com.

The main advantages for me are that that access is a lot quicker, you get the NOTAM stuff off the same site. They also have something the Met Office site doesn't do, even the enhanced service (which I have used) which is the last few METAR instead of just the latest one. This is great for establishing a trend against the TAF.

Cheers,
TheOddOne

[S-Works]

I use a free weather widget on my mac for the same thing!

I do use Avbrief but prefer the Met Office and Notam Plot. Horses for courses really, we use what we feel comfortable with.

[BackPacker]

I get most of my "advanced" stuff from www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten. Looking at Boses list, I think almost everything is on there. For free.

[IO540]

It's always interesting to look at weather services, because the picture (no pun intended) keeps changing.

Rainfall radar - British Isles and Europe
One can get that free from www.meteox.com - does the UKMO offer near real time (say 5/10 mins delayed) version? Meteox is about 30-45 mins delayed and stops at the Alps, not covering Italy. Does the UKMO radar cover a wider area?

Lightning observations
This is known as "sferics" and one can get that free from many sites, e.g.
http://www.blitzortung.de/index.php?mode=6&map=3&lang=e
although I can no longer find their downloadable Java viewer (I have a copy if anybody needs it).

European synoptic charts -
colour animation or black & white printable
These can be obtained free from various places

British Isles synoptic analysis
As above

Visible satellite pictures
As above

Infrared satellite pictures
As above - how current? Cloud top temperatures can be used to estimate cloud tops, but this is useful only if very current (checked just before a flight)

Flight-level wind and temperature charts
Available free

Significant weather charts
The Avbrief sub service (which I subscribe to) has the SigWx, but one can also get it free from a few places.

[S-Works]

Horses for courses as I said. I am not defending the met site either way. It gives me what I want as a one stop shop on my iPhone in a format I am familiar with. To me it is worth the subscription service and am not going to lose sleep over 50 quid.

[scooter boy]

I get it all for free mainly at the European Aviation Weather Centre.
Why spend £56 on weather when you don't have to?

SB

[bjornhall]

http://euro.wx.propilots.net/

Pretty much everything, one stop, for all of Europe...