New, free SMS METAR service from Google!

CARoss

CARoss

Filing Flight Plan
Joined
Sep 24, 2007
Messages
22
Location
Portland, OR
Display Name
Display name:
Chris
So, I've been looking for a fast and easy way to get METAR information on the fly. There are lots of PAY services out there, but look at this...

Google JUST implemented a free SMS based METAR service.
You just SMS to GOOGL (a.k.a. 46645) and say "metar " with the airport code.

I just sent "metar khio" to 46645 and got:
KHIO 040253Z 24004KT 10SM CLR 09/07 A3030 RMK AO2 SLP261 T00940072
53002 $

in return.

This is such an awesome feature. Best of all... free.

Got to love the Google.
 
Also "weather" >zip code< will get you more pedestrian current conditions and three days' forecast.

You can send either to "Googl" (46645) or "Google" (466453)

Thanks for the update :)
 
Hah! Another rotorhead has surfaced!

Welcome to this board, Chris! We need all the flingwingers we can find to help fend off the dark side!
 
RotaryWingBob said:
Hah! Another rotorhead has surfaced!

Welcome to this board, Chris! We need all the flingwingers we can find to help fend off the dark side!
Click to expand...
When I read your use of rotorhead, I suddenly envisioned those games at Chuck E. Cheese... where the critters pop out of the holes and you knock them back down with a large, fabric mallet? :D

Chris, welcome to the board! ...even if from the dark side. :)
 
Well, I just tried it out for my local airport. I got a text right back, everything worked great, except for one little detail:

The metar it texted back was from 2 days ago.
 
mattaxelrod said:
Well, I just tried it out for my local airport. I got a text right back, everything worked great, except for one little detail:

The metar it texted back was from 2 days ago.
Click to expand...

Well, you might want to go down there and wake up the squirrels in the ASOS :D, the Google data comes from the government weather website.
 
If your phone has a browser and can access the web..

Check out mymetar.com you can store a list of metars that you want and then from your phone you just go to www.mymetar.com/ " user name" and it displays your list of metars as well as some images that you choose..

I found it to work very nicely.

Jon
 
iflyatiger said:
If your phone has a browser and can access the web..

Check out mymetar.com you can store a list of metars that you want and then from your phone you just go to www.mymetar.com/ " user name" and it displays your list of metars as well as some images that you choose..

I found it to work very nicely.

Jon
Click to expand...

I agree with Jon. This is the site I use on my cell phone if I'm not near a computer. If I'm flying somewhere that may not have internet service I just update my specific METAR's before I leave and they are available via cell browser.
 
Why not just have a laptop with an aircard? :)

On the Treo, I use the browser to bring up a preselected list of METARs and TAFs from ADDS.

The SMS idea sounds great if it brings you current data. But, seeing how my attempt moments ago returned KPDK with a date/time code of... "040253Z"... it seems just a tad unreliable.
 
KennyFlys said:
Why not just have a laptop with an aircard? :)

On the Treo, I use the browser to bring up a preselected list of METARs and TAFs from ADDS.

The SMS idea sounds great if it brings you current data. But, seeing how my attempt moments ago returned KPDK with a date/time code of... "040253Z"... it seems just a tad unreliable.
Click to expand...
Hmm, I just tried it and it is working fine. A tad bit windy down there!
 
iflyatiger said:
If your phone has a browser and can access the web..

Check out mymetar.com you can store a list of metars that you want and then from your phone you just go to www.mymetar.com/ " user name" and it displays your list of metars as well as some images that you choose..

I found it to work very nicely.

Jon
Click to expand...

MyMetar.com and www.ForeFlight.com are both great sites. I had actually emailed Tyson (from mymetar) one time to see if he could get the SMS METAR thing going - too bad Google beat him to it. But, I use Google text all the time for weather, addresses and phone numbers, movie show times, and sports scores. I'm glad that they added this feature too.
 
alaskaflyer said:
Hmm, I just tried it and it is working fine. A tad bit windy down there!
Click to expand...
I just tried it again... simultaneously. The results are not promising.

From SMS:
KPDK 061053Z AUTO 35016G22KT 8SM OVC025 15/09 A2999 RMK AO2 SLP149 T01500089 TSNO
Click to expand...

From ADDS:
KPDK 061453Z 31011G18KT 10SM CLR 11/M02 A3011 RMK AO2 SLP194 T01111022 51025
Click to expand...
At least they are from the same date this time. Today, even!
 
I just tried it for KSGR, gave me a time code of 040253Z - I'll give them a few days to get the kinks worked out of the system.
 
You inconsiderate B*, SMS messages cost me 15 cents each. :D So each report would cost 30 cents.

Come to think of it that wouldn't be a bad business model for a aviation site.

I have an old nationwide data plan for very cheap. No SMS included. I do have unlimited web over 3G. I'll trade the no roaming fees for the texting.
 
I don't mean to ruin your thunder (I swear! :yes:) but FlightAware has had their free SMS-based METAR/TAF service for a good year or two now. http://flightaware.com/mobile/emetar/

It works pretty well, but the TAF usually gets cut off on my cellphone. Both the Google and FlightAware eMetar system look very similar.
 
HPNPilot1200 said:
I don't mean to ruin your thunder (I swear! :yes:) but FlightAware has had their free SMS-based METAR/TAF service for a good year or two now. http://flightaware.com/mobile/emetar/

It works pretty well, but the TAF usually gets cut off on my cellphone. Both the Google and FlightAware eMetar system look very similar.
Click to expand...
The page you linked to describes an email-based system, which, for reasons stated before, isn't always as desirable as text messaging.
 
CapeCodJay said:
I can only imagine what that bill woujld be Scott :hairraise:
Click to expand...

I started getting the bill sent to me a few years ago when I went with T-Mobile. We now have corporate billing so I don't see the break downs only the total. But my cell phone bill is in the $500-$1000 range each and every month. Those two and three hour calls to lands far away help. The highest was when I had a four hour call from China to the US. That call alone was over a $1,000!!
 
smigaldi said:
I started getting the bill sent to me a few years ago when I went with T-Mobile. We now have corporate billing so I don't see the break downs only the total. But my cell phone bill is in the $500-$1000 range each and every month. Those two and three hour calls to lands far away help. The highest was when I had a four hour call from China to the US. That call alone was over a $1,000!!
Click to expand...

Like I say. It would be scary if it was real money. :D

I spend millions every week. Only once in a while does it occur to me that on a given project I have the equivalent of a good sized house as a rounding error.
 
mikea said:
Like I say. It would be scary if it was real money. :D

I spend millions every week. Only once in a while does it occur to me that on a given project I have the equivalent of a good sized house as a rounding error.
Click to expand...
Most I ever spent was using the Cray XMP that we had bought at the AF Weapons Lab. The way it was paid for was that each time someone used it the amount of cpu time was charged back to their department. I was doing a finite element model on a large space based laser and started doing the vibrational modal modeling. I was told to do it on the Cray as it was a very calculation heavy simulation to run. I got everything loaded and started running it. It took a little over 24 hours of cpu time to get the results and we blew almost 8 months of our computer budget for a total of $1.3 million. Not bad for days work!
 
This one is just a prototype but works real well on some phones (not so well on the iPhone): http://www.flightcentral.net/mobile

Just separate the airport IDs by space or commas. The colored icons represent flight rules: green=VFR, yellow=MVFR, red=IFR, white=no weather reported

More details at flightcentral.blogspot.com
 
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I just tried KIPT and got the following:

METAR KIPT 101320Z AUTO 25003KT 6SM BR BKN023 OVC041 03/01 A3011 RMK A02

I had tried it about 30 minutes before and got something different, which I now deleted from my Treo so I can't compare (D'oh!), but it did change. I don't know how accurate it is, per se, but the winds are definitely pretty calm, and the cloud cover and temperatures don't look too far off from down here at ground level.
 
smigaldi said:
Most I ever spent was using the Cray XMP that we had bought at the AF Weapons Lab. The way it was paid for was that each time someone used it the amount of cpu time was charged back to their department. I was doing a finite element model on a large space based laser and started doing the vibrational modal modeling. I was told to do it on the Cray as it was a very calculation heavy simulation to run. I got everything loaded and started running it. It took a little over 24 hours of cpu time to get the results and we blew almost 8 months of our computer budget for a total of $1.3 million. Not bad for days work!
Click to expand...

Not quite the same league for the computer, but I remember running a Spice simulation of the entire power bus of a thing (sorry, still don't know if I can say what it was, 24 years later) to see what would happen if the battery was connected with all loads turned on. It wouldn't converge to a solution. They later added high value resistors across all diodes to make that happen. Anyway, I had a run on a VAX 11/780 that ran for 64+ hours of CPU time, and then crashed with no usable output. I don't know what the billing was as the project owned the machine. We daydreamed about installing a Cray and hiding it behind the VAX so nobody would suspect anything until they submitted a job and it was transparantly sent to the Cray to run, resulting in turnaround that we could only dream of. :D
 
:)

Thanks. Yea, I'm loving every minute of it. So far I'm about 16flight hours into my VFR141. So, I'm sure this will be a great place to talk/ask/chat about things along the way. Seems like a very friendly and helpful place to hang out.

Thanks for the warm welcome!

RotaryWingBob said:
Hah! Another rotorhead has surfaced!

Welcome to this board, Chris! We need all the flingwingers we can find to help fend off the dark side!
Click to expand...
 
Yea... I saw what you did too.

Interestingly, when I posted this it was not listed on their SMS help page. It is today... so here is what I think...

I got to it in the secret beta stage. There was a posting on google groups about it, and I tried it... it didn't work. I looked again, about a month later, and it worked. So I used it. Then I figured it was cool enough to share.

NOW it is publicly listed on their site and I'm thinkin' it is 100% released and out of beta.

Check it out: http://www.google.com/sms

I love it.

I use a machine based web query when I'm in front of the computer, but I now check as part of my pre-flight. Well, not really, but when I'm throwing my bag into the seat, I check one last time to see if there were any changes.



mattaxelrod said:
Well, I just tried it out for my local airport. I got a text right back, everything worked great, except for one little detail:

The metar it texted back was from 2 days ago.
Click to expand...
 
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