Met'Map : Your new online tool for METARs & TAFs... Powerful & Free !!!!!!
 

Dear all,

Some weeks ago, we developped an online tool to display METARs & TAFs on a map on a pleasant way (a kind of weather depiction chart).
This was supposed to be for our students only, on the private member portal of our IFR Flight School.

Then we thought : this tool is so useful, maybe we should open it to all pilots ?And we did it !


So feel free to use Met'Map in your everyday pilot life !


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2165/...fb3c69ef63.jpg


Met'Map displays :

- METARs & Short TAFs & Long TAFs
- Decoded METARs
- Coloured METARs (VFR / Marginal VFR / IFR / Intensiv IFR / Very Intensiv IFR)
- All Europe (from Portugal/Ireland to Greece/Latvia)
- in French or in English


For example, below you'll find the UK METAR Chart in English :
http://www.orbifly.com/ORBITEST/metm...metar&lang=ENG

It can be centered on your airfield, exemple if you fly in Coventry :
http://www.orbifly.com/ORBITEST/metm...metar&lang=ENG

If any question or problem, contact us !

Happy landings !

Alex

ORBIFLY, FAA IFR & CPL training in Europe since 1999
ORBIFLY, l'IFR américain (FAA) en Europe depuis 1999

Website : http://www.orbifly.com/
Newsletter : http://www.orbifly.com/index.php?mode=novembair
Met'Map : http://www.orbifly.com/ORBITEST/metmap.php


PS : Please notice that Met'Map is only an additional tool, and CAN NOT substitute to any official weather service.

Alex,

Absolutely fantastic, I've added it to my Favourites on my browser.

Well done!

TheOddOne

Thank you for that; it is very useful and easy to use.

Orbifly , Well done , just had a quick gander looks excellent , I like the point and shoot feature getting individual A/F wx by pointing the mouse . Thanks very much for posting it .

Formidable!

Very nice indeed - merci bien!

One minor suggestion, why not align your colour codes to those used by the military (cloudbase pertains to SCT, not BKN):

Black - Airfield closed for non-Met reasons.

Red - Cloud under 200ft, and/or Visibility under 800m.

Amber - Better than Red, but cloud under 300ft, and/or visibility under 1600m.

Yellow - Better than Amber, but cloud under 700ft, and/or visibility under 3700m.

Green - Better than Yellow, but cloud under 1500ft, and/or visibility under 5km.

White - Better than Green, but Cloud under 2500ft, and/or visibility under 8km.

Blue - Cloud 2500ft or above and visibility 8km or more.

Also, in the UK one can be under IFR in VMC.....:rolleyes:

Just a little thing....
 

At the time of this post EGTG was giving

METAR - 2008/01/13 11:20 EGTG 131120Z 19021G31KT 9999 BKN022 11/08 Q1000

Your website has classified this as marginal VFR which has a vis category of 5-8km, yet the metar is giving all the 9's. Granted that the metar cloud base is in line with the ceiling that Marginal VFR category has assigned to it.

So is your algorithm using either of the values to categorise?

This is great. But Shoreham (EGKA), Southampton (EGHI) and Plymouth (EGHD) are missing! Could they be added please?

You are a picky bunch :}

What about military colour coded flying gloves as well for left and right.

On a more serious civillian note--excellent, well done

Very nice design, well done mate :ok:

Llainfairpg , Join the royal arse farce and the queens flight and your wish shall be granted , but dont go all coy on the barmaids thats to be encouraged methinks

No the point is that if a colour code already exists, why not use it?

Mods (BRL particularly), there is a sticky in this forum with a few useful links to flight planning stuff. Could this be added there please?

Dear Pilots,


For the colors, we spent a long time thinking about it.
Was not easy :-)

We considered the Military classification, but we could not use it as it refers also to the airfield aids available, and other informations which are not available in METARS.

______________

The reason why this EGTG METAR :

METAR - 2008/01/13 11:20 EGTG 131120Z 19021G31KT 9999 BKN022 11/08 Q1000

gives a "Marginal VFR" status, is because the ceiling is below 3000 ft.
Both visibility and ceiling are used for determining the status.
Limits are given below the chart.

__________________


+ I'll add your airfields dear jellybean !


Alexandra
ORBIFLY

Done !
I added Shoreham, Plymouth and Southampton.

Weather data should be available within 15minutes max.
I did my best, but I hope I added them on the exact position !

Tell me if mistakes :-)

Happy landings

Alexandra
ORBIFLY
www.orbifly.com

Thats fun! And it works on my MAC with Safari without any problems!

The next request to is to overlay fronts and wind charts:)

Or have a similar page with them on.

Military colour codes do not include aid states - just weather. Easily converted from METARS.

'Black' means that the RW is closed for reasons other than weather.

2999 ft and all the 9s (9999) would mean LOVELY VFR to me! I get hypoxic that high!

Dear BEagle,


We understand your proposal, and you are absolutely right : why using another system when one already exists ? That makes sense.

In fact, we thought about that classification deeply, but decided to do otherwise for several reasons.

In that system, not only weather is implicated (at least in France).

You can find this explanation here page 5 (French military doc) :
http://www.dircam.air.defense.gouv.f...DF/ERF_CAM.pdf

Amber implies also : Precision approach only.
Some parts of the colors diagram implie that non-direct non-precision approaches only are available.
And there are some colors like green+ or blue+ which cannot be proposed as "colors".
Black : airfield closed.
And some suffixes can imply several things (restrictions, approach closed, landing closed for other reason than weather).

Moreover, they consider a "ceiling" with SCT, BKN and OVC, whereas the civilian system considers only BKN and OVC.


So if we had used that system, it would have been necessary to modify it to make it usable.

We thought that proposing something which "looks like" the military system, but modified, could have created a confusion for those who are used to the military system, or interpretation errors.


So we decided to do something else.

We limited the number of colors to 5 colors only, to make it more easy to read, especially with the coloured background chart.

We decided to use the same weather limits as those used on Jeppesen weather depiction charts, to make it easy to understand for jeppesen charts' users.

But we were not satisfied with the Jeppesen colors (pink for very intensive IFR, and white for VFR, green for marginal VFR).

Then we tried different colors system and found the one which is online.

Maybe we'll make changes in the future to improve it ! :-)
All suggestions are welcome, so thank you BEagle and all the other for the brainstorming.

Best regards,

Alexandra
ORBIFLY

Thank you very much for EGKA. I think I am in love.