Kelly
Pre-Flight
I know it's already been superceded by the 496, but yesterday was another flight that made me so glad I got a Garmin 396 with xm weather last year. I flew from northen Michigan to southeastern Pa while most of Pennsylvania and 1/4 of Ohio were covered with storms.
In just under 4 hours I skirted around a substantial weather system, crossed two fronts and got home by ducking into West Virginia, going up north of Camp David, then shooting a GPS approach.
Monitoring 122.0 I heard many people asking flight service for advice and then landing short, making huge deviation decisions and in two cases making pireps in heavy rain and turbulance... Contrast that to a smooth flight never close to any significant weather and always having options. Without in flight weather, it is a trip I would have cancelled based on the outlooks. But having updated radar pictures and forecasts (yes, it's not "real time", but delayed) as you are enroute is priceless for making safe routing decisions. Now if I could just get my daughter to let me choose the music channel.....
In just under 4 hours I skirted around a substantial weather system, crossed two fronts and got home by ducking into West Virginia, going up north of Camp David, then shooting a GPS approach.
Monitoring 122.0 I heard many people asking flight service for advice and then landing short, making huge deviation decisions and in two cases making pireps in heavy rain and turbulance... Contrast that to a smooth flight never close to any significant weather and always having options. Without in flight weather, it is a trip I would have cancelled based on the outlooks. But having updated radar pictures and forecasts (yes, it's not "real time", but delayed) as you are enroute is priceless for making safe routing decisions. Now if I could just get my daughter to let me choose the music channel.....
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