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Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2018 9:15 pm
by cessna170bdriver
This one was bigger than my first source estimated. NASA now says it was about 2 yards across and weighed about 2 tons on entry. 8O Fortunately there probably weren’t any remnants over 1-2 ounces in weight.
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Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 9:49 pm
by hilltop170
Hey Miles, where is page 5A? I was hoping to read the rest of the article.

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 4:50 am
by cessna170bdriver
I was only giving the highlights, but since you asked:
EDE24708-DBD6-478D-9578-EE8E23D06E42.jpeg
Here’s another article, also in yesterday’s paper:
459CF917-CD51-4FF1-B1A1-DE71671C6702.jpeg
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... and another one today saying that some pieces have been found:
08308EEE-8F51-4101-82BE-38A3189F06AE.jpeg
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Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 5:34 pm
by GAHorn
Beware picking up pieces of stuff that fall out of the sky. A lot of what we see burn up at night is junk from satellites and rockets and some of that stuff can be seriously hazardous due to chemical/nuclear contamination. --- Chicken Little

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 6:20 pm
by hilltop170
Thanks for posting "the rest of the story".

That was a well written story. Is your house anywhere near the debris field?

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 8:42 pm
by bsdunek
We saw the flash and heard the sonic boom too. I first thought it was a rare winter thunderstorm. Didn't find out till the next day. Our local newspaper has an article about people looking for remains. A couple have found some, so they did get to the ground.

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 8:53 pm
by bsdunek
Wow George, that Windy.com site is sure interesting. It will take some time to sort it all out though. Gives a good overview.

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 12:19 am
by GAHorn
I appreciate the recognition of introduction to the windy.com site....but to be honest.... I discovered it on Ol' Gar's computer one morning about 4 AM. He'd fallen "asleep at the wheel" and gone to bed with it still open...apparently confused as to what it was.... so I explored it bit and found it interesting.

Don't bother tryin' to explain it to him... He still gets his weather information from a rock in the yard.
Ol' Gar's Rock-Solid Weather System
Ol' Gar's Rock-Solid Weather System
weatherRock.png (118.08 KiB) Viewed 33284 times

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2018 1:36 pm
by 170C
That rock is probably more reliable than most other sources :mrgreen:

Windy appears to be one that looks ahead more than a couple of days. That’s what I was looking for. Thanks

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 5:59 am
by cfzxo
The only problem with Windy is it doesn't forecast freezing ground fog. :oops: landed in some last week, didn't look bad from the air, but picked up about 1/2 inch of ice on landing, with most of it taxing off the runway with no forward visibility, lucky there was no go around, Great weather forecast site George and Gary. :D

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:52 am
by cessna170bdriver
hilltop170 wrote:Thanks for posting "the rest of the story".

That was a well written story. Is your house anywhere near the debris field?
We are about 8 miles north of the impact area.

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:56 am
by cessna170bdriver
cfzxo wrote:The only problem with Windy is it doesn't forecast freezing ground fog. :oops: landed in some last week, didn't look bad from the air, but picked up about 1/2 inch of ice on landing, with most of it taxing off the runway with no forward visibility, lucky there was no go around, Great weather forecast site George and Gary. :D
I only experienced freezing fog once, and thankfully it wasn't in an airplane. I was driving to work down the hill between Tehachapi and Mojave when I noticed the wire antenna on my '97 Saturn doing some WILD gyrations. About a half inch of ice had built up on the leading edge and it was giving a grand demonstration of aerodynamic flutter!

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2018 2:40 pm
by GAHorn
I was ferrying a Hawker from Houston to Ireland and landed for fuel at Gander. It was a clear night and with the runway lights in-sight I reported it to the tower who, instead of clearing us for a "visual"...the tower cleared us for the ILS. Being naturally lazy I hit "APPCH" on the autopilot and let it do it's thing, and mentioned to Adrian Trevis (who was sitting right-seat) "Hey! Ya wanna see how it would do in a zero-zero landing?"

"Sure," he answered. (Adrian was a former RAF pilot who, among other "aeroplanes", had flown the military version of the Hawker, called the "Dominie".)
RAF_Hawker_Siddeley_HS-125-2_Dominie_T1_Lofting-1.jpg
We were looking at the entire runway as if through a dirty camera-lens... it looked sorta "fuzzy" but was actually looking like a simple visual-approach on autopilot. I had done this before on a different Hawker on a clear visual approach and was surprised to find that the old Collins AP103 Autopilot would actually level-off as the airplane passes the glide-slope "shack"... making it a simple matter to press the DisConnect button under my thumb and pull the power off for a sweet touchdown. Although the old 1960's era jet / avionics never had auto-land....it was almost as good!
I was curious if other examples of the same autopilot would be adjusted and behave the same way.

About 200' AGL the entire runway disappeared for a moment... then reappeared with a thin-ceiling above it (just as surprised-me was startled into a possible go-around... but saw the runway again and as the 103 levelled off... I disconnected and landed.

We taxied in and found to our surprise we had a quarter to a half-inch of ice on all the leading edges. 8O

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2018 2:42 am
by nippaero
gahorn wrote:Here is one of the most FUN weather websites... experiment with all the features and I'll bet it becomes one of YOUR favorites also!

https://www.windy.com/?32.779,-96.822,5,m:eqTad8B
Thanks George.
Ditto on the Windy.com site. Pretty cool.

Re: Aviation Weather Forecasts

Posted: Wed May 22, 2019 1:11 pm
by gfeher
We have a pretty good pilots' association here in the Glens Falls, NY area and WeatherSpork is becoming popular as some of us become familiar with it. I also recently attended an FAA sponsored seminar in Albany on the latest weather forcasting tools and WeatherSpork was the instructor's favorite. It's both accessible via a downloadable app or via a website if you don't have or can't use the app. Unfortunately it subscription-based ($79/yr), like Foreflight. But it's really powerful and has innovative graphical information not found on other sites. The subscription also includes access to loads of weather tutorials. Here are links to their site and a video explaining some of it's features. It has way too many features for me to explain them, so I'll just refer you to the video. Some of the features that I really like (such as the route profile) begin at about 10 min into the video. I have not come anyway near to understanding all of it's features.

https://weatherspork.com

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iqSSlnrC_0E