Kyle Thornley said:
Alrighty Eamon, just because I was recently dodging T-storms with only the help of ATC to guide me, adding almost an hour on to my flight, I'm now thinking that some sort of onboard instrumentation is necessary. What is that you are using? What type of AC were you flying and how reliable was it really? I noted you said you were seeing to the left while the Bendix was showing only to the right.
I'd like to get the biggest bang for my buck to reliably avoid the big buck bangs.
Kyle, for best performance, you really need two things. A stormscope and some form of radar.
I have a WX-900 (best bang-buck in Stormscopes). Last summer I broke down and bought the portable WxWorx receiver package
http://www.wxworx.com and a tablet PC. I bought a ruggedized PC that has a hard drive rated to 16,000 feet +/-. WxWorx uplinks the Doppler weather radar from NWS, satellite pictures, along with ground-based lightning detection (and a lot of other stuff).
The nice thing about WxWorx is that it allows you to "see" the other side of the storm or cell, so you know what to expect. The drawback is that it's not 100% real-time (the radar data updates every 4-8 minutes, that is a NWS limitation).
I use WxWork as a strategic tool, and the Stormscope for tactical stuff.
I picked my way through a line of storms in Missouri/Arkansas on Tuesday with WxWorx (see the thread on me visiting Twin Oaks), and I used it to almost completely avoid a fast-moving cell over West Virginia on Monday. I could tell how fast the WV cell was moving, and I asked for a deviation far enough and early enough to avoid most of the precip. If I'd relied on the stormscope alone, I would have been in the middle of it.
WxWorx is about $900 for the receiver and software, and either $35 or $50 a month. You'll need a display - there's a way to do it on an iPaq, I like my tablet PC (about $1500).
