Deleted

Sweet! I'll have a reason to leave the cell stuff on in-flight now! Hehehe.
 
according to the FAA notice...

"Users are required to register prior to accessing the PIREP submission form. Validation of user accounts will consider whether the user has
- a pilot's license
- a .gov or .mil email address
- a group id number for airlines
All other requests will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis."
soooo, a GA pilot is SOL? Am I mis-reading this? It may be that this section of the notice refers back to the experimental program and if so then the notice is not worded very well. I know, big surprise.

I did send this question to the contact listed at the bottom of the FAA notice and will report what and if I get a reply.
 
rk911 said:
"Users are required to register prior to accessing the PIREP submission form. Validation of user accounts will consider whether the user has
- a pilot's license
- a .gov or .mil email address
- a group id number for airlines
All other requests will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis."
Click to expand...
I suspect there's a missing "or" in that list.
 
Its about time. I've been wanting a feature like this for many years.
 
Wow. This is great. Will hopefully encourage more pilots to file a report.
 
Let's see. . .I can press a button in flight, speak plain English, and be done. Or, wait till I land, fire up a browser, open a web form. . .or not bother.
 
Sundancer said:
Let's see. . .I can press a button in flight, speak plain English, and be done. Or, wait till I land, fire up a browser, open a web form. . .or not bother.
Click to expand...

Heh. There's even a scratchpad template for the order to give them in, in Foreflight.

Scribble notes, press button, speak items in order on screen, receive bacon. ;)

Maybe this is really for dispatchers or something. Pilot says weather blows over ACARS, dispatcher types into web form. Who knows.
 
If you've ever filed a pirep with FSS over the radio, you know how tedious the process can be. I'd much rather type a few characters into an app and transmit it when I get a signal airborne.
 
Brad Z said:
If you've ever filed a pirep with FSS over the radio, you know how tedious the process can be. I'd much rather type a few characters into an app and transmit it when I get a signal airborne.
Click to expand...

I've never found it tedious if you have the correct order to read it to them in. It's tedious when they have to query you for the items one at a time.

AOPA had a nice half sheet form for them years ago, and I usually had one tossing around in the flight bag somewhere. Now as I mentioned, Foreflight does as a scratchpad template.

If you just say on their first query, "I'll read these to you in standard order..."' and then read the items down the form, they're just typing it in as you go. One transmission, they might ask for clarification on something and it's done.
 
denverpilot said:
I've never found it tedious if you have the correct order to read it to them in. It's tedious when they have to query you for the items one at a time.

AOPA had a nice half sheet form for them years ago, and I usually had one tossing around in the flight bag somewhere. Now as I mentioned, Foreflight does as a scratchpad template.

If you just say on their first query, "I'll read these to you in standard order..."' and then read the items down the form, they're just typing it in as you go. One transmission, they might ask for clarification on something and it's done.
Click to expand...

I use the standard order for a pirep. It's tedious in the Washington DC area when I'm on a short hiatus from ATC to file a PIREP and the FSS specialist feels obligated to tell me about the SFRA/FRZ, special awareness training, unsolicited weather, asking my destination (is that necessary to file a pirep?), and then slowly repeating my pirep. I practically have to hang up on them to get back to Potomac Tracon.
 
Brad Z said:
I use the standard order for a pirep. It's tedious in the Washington DC area when I'm on a short hiatus from ATC to file a PIREP and the FSS specialist feels obligated to tell me about the SFRA/FRZ, special awareness training, unsolicited weather, asking my destination (is that necessary to file a pirep?), and then slowly repeating my pirep. I practically have to hang up on them to get back to Potomac Tracon.
Click to expand...

LOL! Now that probably can't be helped in the era of contractor based FSS. Hahaha. Other than not bothering... Heh.
 
Brad Z said:
If only we had a device that transmitted information from our aircraft to a ground station every second.
Click to expand...
It seems some aircraft have an auto-reporting PIREP feature. Sometimes near airports where heavy metal arrive you'll see a string of PIREPS every 30 miles or so from one airplane on the arrival or departure path. I assume this is automated and not the co-pilot getting board and deciding to call up FSS every two minutes.
 
rocketflyer84 said:
It seems some aircraft have an auto-reporting PIREP feature. Sometimes near airports where heavy metal arrive you'll see a string of PIREPS every 30 miles or so from one airplane on the arrival or departure path. I assume this is automated and not the co-pilot getting board and deciding to call up FSS every two minutes.
Click to expand...

That's correct, I've seen that. I was hinting at ADS-B out, and the unfortunate fact that the system was not designed to accommodate any additional information in the data packet.
 
Brad Z said:
If only we had a device that transmitted information from our aircraft to a ground station every second.
Click to expand...
Mary and I have discussed the amazing potential of harnessing the real time reporting capabilities of ADS-B equipped aircraft.

Right now, our winds aloft forecasts are crapola because they have so few reporting stations (weather balloons) and then must extrapolate between them. This ends up with winds aloft forecasts that, in my experience, are often laughably wrong.

Picture a system of real time weather, being transmitted from the thousands of aircraft that are airborne at any given time. Winds aloft, temperature, etc., would be available in real time. Forecasting and reporting would improve exponentially.

*sigh* If the government wasn't involved, we'd probably already have that capability, and the Weather Channel would be paying us all to install the equipment. lol
 
Brad Z said:
That's correct, I've seen that. I was hinting at ADS-B out, and the unfortunate fact that the system was not designed to accommodate any additional information in the data packet.
Click to expand...

Well there are bandwidth limitations in a multi-node data network, and recall that 978 is a total hack on top of Mode-S not being able to keep up with the traffic density expected and known at major airports before the design of the thing even started...

You can only shove so many bits down the tiny pipe. 978 proved that someone didn't do the math to begin with...

And you have the "hidden node" problem in RF multi-node data systems to deal with too... So you need quite a bit of unused timeslot overhead to catch and correct the times when a receiver hears two stations clobber each other, even with randomization of transmission.

Aloft, that happens even more, considering multiple ground stations hear multiple aircraft but not the same ones in the same coverage area.

Wouldn't take much to jam up and screw up a data network like that. One innocuous transmitter at altitude that refuses to transmit only when it's "turn" comes up, is enough. Total mess. And without reception confirmation on any of it... The results will be fairly random as to who received what and what got missed by which stations participating.

It's a really awful RF data network design. Really awful.
 
The Aerovie app allows you to fill out a form to submit a PIREP. That part of the app is free.

You can submit one and see it pop up on Foreflight via a Stratus a couple minutes later.

I think this has been working for at least the last 12 months or so.
 
scottd said:
It's not for every situation. There are still many biz jets that are equipped with WiFi where this would be perfect. While IFR, it's problematic to leave the frequency in busy airspace. Submitting your PIREP to ATC doesn't guarantee it'll get into the system.

I've submitted a couple using this form while VFR en route (I don't get cell reception all that much, but when it's there I use it).
Click to expand...
Roger roger - in a 172, IFR, not an issue for me. But VFR, I'd rather be looking for you (traffic), instead of head-down-and-locked gacking with this. . .but each to his own.
 
scottd said:
Well, that's not how it works. The forecast isn't simply an extrapolation of radiosonde observations. Not sure what gave you that impression? The FBWinds forecast is actually quite accurate at the altitudes, valid time and location of the forecast. It uses the North American Mesoscale model which incorporates many more data points than just the radiosonde obs to produce the forecast.
Click to expand...

Interesting. What sort of devices are giving you real time winds aloft data at specific altitudes, other than balloons?
 
scottd said:
VAD Wind Profiles from NEXRAD, satellite winds, ACARS reports from aircraft, just to name a few.
Click to expand...
Interesting, mostly because (in my experience) all these inputs don't seem to produce any sort of reliable winds aloft forecasts.

Not that I find this surprising, or anyone's fault. The atmosphere is capricious, at best. Predicting such forces with any geographic precision, over time, is as close to impossible as anything in nature, I suspect.

Hopefully some day all of our ADS-B equipped aircraft will help produce more reliable winds aloft forecasting.
 
scottd said:
I have a different experience. I don't use the official FBWinds because they have a poor temporal and spatial resolution. For those that do use this outdated method, I can appreciate the issue of reliable winds. The winds I use are usually spot on when I'm flying.
Click to expand...
Where can one find the winds you use? And is there a way for the layman to find out which version is being presented by a given Web site?
 
I'm a Foreflight subscriber, but I use other products as well, Skyvector, for example. Is there any way to tell which version they are using?
 
Sundancer said:
Let's see. . .I can press a button in flight, speak plain English, and be done. Or, wait till I land, fire up a browser, open a web form. . .or not bother.
Click to expand...

I've had problems with flight service folks in the past including accents that I can't understand and telling me what I'm filing can't possibly be correct and I don't know what I'm talking about. I've had cell signal up at 17,500 before and some of the planes I fly have wifi. It's much easier to file over text in my opinion.
 
Palmpilot said:
I suspect there's a missing "or" in that list.
Click to expand...
you called it! just got a reply back from the contact and he confirmed that all certificated GA pilots will be granted access to the new online PIREP system.
 
Is online PIREP filing operational now? Has anyone tried it?
 
Bump, anyone? I'm really interested in this, but I couldn't find it online.
 
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