Met
 

Can you please advise me on the 'best' book or learning aide that helped you to learn for the Met exam ? I dont find this an easy topic...

What have you tried?
Any particular areas proving stickier than others?
What are you learning to fly?

The PPL Confuser and Thom book (book 2) combination. The Confuser is so good it is virtually cheating. Just to echo what has been said before by others, I don't know why it is allowed.

AerBabe, I have tried Thom book 2 but went to a ground school session on this at my old flying school and the guy thoroughly confused me !! The clouds in particular to identify and remember and also Adiabatic lapse rates !!

I am signed up for ground school at my new club so hopefully this will help

Flying PA28 161 Cadet

Have a look at Irv Lee's Weatherwatch articles - some of them are on the Flyer website (which seems to be down at the moment!).

deanofs,

Try "Pilot's Weather" by Brian Cosgrove. He explains things really clearly, with lots of diagrams. I would use Thom and the Confuser so you know what you're likely to be asked in the exam, but Brian Cosgrove's books to really understand the stuff.

Remembering clouds...

Three classifications as to height:
High - cirrus or cirro-something-or other.
Medium - Alto-something or other
Low - no prefix.

Within this there are two categories:
Stratus or strati-something-or other - layered
Cumulus or cumilo-something-or-other - heaped
Also Nimbus - rain bearing.

So cirro-stratus translates as high layered cloud. Alto-cumulus is medium heaped cloud. Cumulonimbus are heaped rainbearing cloud. Just remember the classifications, and you can probably sort out the rest.

What do you want to know about adiabatic lapse rates and I'll try to explain it, or if I can't I'm sure someone else on here can.

Probably worth searching here first - I asked when I was struggling with Met, and got some good answers from Bookworm, Irv and others

Re. recognising clouds - the way I learnt to do this was by practicing it in real life. Every morning, I'd look up at the sky and try to figure out what type of clouds I could see. Then I'd go one stage further, and come up with my own short-range forecast.

When I got to work, I'd look at the weather forecast on the met office website, and see how well it matched my own. Cloud types can be found on MetForm 215.

FFF
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For most things in met the best books are the ones written for glider pilots. One I found useful is 'Understanding Flying Weather' by Derk Piggott. It's not too big and intimidating either!

I suggest you try and get hold of the books to look through before you buy, as a style that suits one person may not suit another.

Also have a look on the 'net as there are some useful pictorial guides to cloud types with lots of photos. If you can't find them, let me know and I'll post links.

online guide, quite useful:

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/home.rxml