A simple metar app

Jim K

Jim K

Final Approach
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Mar 31, 2019
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CMI
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Richard Digits
I was lamenting the hassle of opening a browser and navigating to a website to access metars and tafs, so decided to see if there was a "widget" that would display the information on my home screen. Of course there is. Anyway, I found an app called "Windsock" which very simply displays metars and tafs for your selected airports. It also includes a widget that displays the information for one airport on your home screen and acts as a link to open the app. I wish I had found this years ago and thought some here might find it helpful. It's free with an ad on the bottom, but I think I'm going to cough up the $1.50 the developer is asking for the "pro" version because it's so handy.
Screenshot_20221129-073633_Windsock.jpg Screenshot_20221129-073639_Windsock.jpg Screenshot_20221129-073623_One UI Home.jpg
 
Nice to see a good, free option for those who don't want to pay up for FFlight or Garmin Pilot.
 
1800wxbrief has always done pretty much the same thing, maybe minus the home screen widget
 
WDD said:
Nice to see a good, free option for those who don't want to pay up for FFlight or Garmin Pilot.
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Garmin pilot on android takes a good 30s to start, and the last update broke the weather updating. It takes a good minute or two for the weather to populate now.

eman1200 said:
1800wxbrief has always done pretty much the same thing, maybe minus the home screen widget
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Yep, I like the dashboard, and use it often, but it takes a bit of time and a number of button pushes to get there. Open the browser, click the shortcut, log in, wait for it to load.

Today for example, I was thinking about making a short flight to pick up some parts. A quick glance at the taf told me I today isn't a great day to go. Took maybe 5s instead of minutes. Apparently I'm impatient.
 
Jim K said:
....Today for example, I was thinking about making a short flight to pick up some parts. A quick glance at the taf told me I today isn't a great day to go. Took maybe 5s instead of minutes. Apparently I'm impatient.
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if the tafs looked good, what would be your next step(s) in flight planning?
 
yeah, it's a website, but I just favorite it and I made it mobile friendly-ish:

www.sidnaw.org/weather

every once in a while when a metar or TAF doesn't follow standard format it will trigger a LIFR when it's not.
 
eman1200 said:
if the tafs looked good, what would be your next step(s) in flight planning?
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For the 50nm vfr flight I'm looking at, I'd go to Garmin pilot to check notams and check other tafs surrounding the destination to make sure there's not something coming that didn't show up on my local forecast. Obviously longer or weather-ier flights get a lot more scrutiny. When there's 45 knot gusts in my local forecast though, that's all I need to see.
 
Have you tried the Avia Weather app for your phone? METARs, TAFs, and NOTAMs for your selected airports. I've had it for several years and use it regularly. Quick, simple, and handy.
 
Having an “instant on” performance for FFlight, I’m shocked that it takes 30 seconds to open Garmin Pilot on your Android, and up to two minutes for weather to populate.
 
WDD said:
Having an “instant on” performance for FFlight, I’m shocked that it takes 30 seconds to open Garmin Pilot on your Android, and up to two minutes for weather to populate.
Click to expand...

I don't know what phone he has, but I think the load time is highly dependent on how powerful your phone is. My instructor had an Android phone, but it was a very powerful one, and it could boot up Garmin Pilot very quickly (I never tried to count the seconds). I, on the other hand, have a relatively cheap and "weak" phone and it would take a bit for the phone to pull up the app...which is SOP for almost every single app anyway.
 
I don't have GP on my phone at all. Phones on average last me about 6 months, do I buy cheap ones. My eyes are too weak and fingers too big to use it on the phone anyway.

It is *almost instant on my ipad mini 6, but I only use it in the plane. For planning I use a 10" Android tablet. It is getting a little long in the tooth, but the weather update problem is new with the last update. I'm sure they'll fix it... Eventually.

Point is, I wanted something that I could pick up my phone and see at a glance without any button pushing or waiting. This is that.
 
Aeroweather is another option. Has widgets and goes to iWatch in the watch face if you like.
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Didn’t br y an create something like this when he was designing fiveflight?
 
Salty said:
Didn’t br y an create something like this when he was designing fiveflight?
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He made a kneeboard generator for making a quick printout you can scribble on en-route. I used it a couple of times.

IDK, maybe he made a metar spitter outer too.
 
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