Safety Seminars: Meat and Potatoes or Breadcrumbs

[denverpilot]

The following credit(s) are available for the WINGS/AMT Programs:

Basic Knowledge 3 - 1 Credit
Advanced Knowledge 1 - 1 Credit

That one breaks my “Advanced” rule.

I would appreciate a serious discussion about the state of the union as far as the ADS-B 2020 mandate. Cost of compliance, current solutions available/approved, shop wait times and turnaround times. Also, debunking myths and rumors about ADS-B, WAAS, and NextGen program in general. Also, discussions on new graphical weather products or a how to on Skew-T charts.

State of ADS-B: Watch your local or regional business aircraft association websites. They’re much harder hit by that and the local one has had some decent speakers from avionics shops talking to the bizjet operators around here and quite a bit of the information crosses over.

ADS-B Myths: Such as it was designed primarily as a safety system? That’s FAA’s carrot but not its design purpose. The design purpose is right in the name. Surveillance. And the only data it gives that radar doesn’t is your N-number so... you can figure it out from there. It’s clearly been stated that ADS-B data may NOT replace primary radar at this point in time, not allowed. So... we can logically figure out exactly what the intent of it is. Identification. Not location.

WAAS: Fully operational and even covered in written tests now. What are you looking to know?

NexGen: A marketing wank name that’s meaningless. FAA can call anything they want “NexGen”. Many of us remember it as “FreeFlight” or at least an early iteration of it. The marketing wank name “NexGen” has changed meaning over a couple of decades. Plus it wouldn’t be hard to have “NexGen II” or “NexNexGen: Return of the Federal Contract Lobbyists” coming soon to a theater near you!

Graphical weather products: Official or unofficial ones? Probably only see FAA approved ones in FAASTeam seminars just because they’re not testing on unofficial ones and expect pilots to work off of official weather sources, but obviously there’s great unofficial ones also. Someone could probably put together a seminar on both and get away with talking about unofficial ones that way, though. Start doing comparisons or bad mouthing the official ones though, and they’d probably pull the plug. Just a guess on that part. You’d have to really be darn right and prove it if you were telling pilots to diregard official weather sources for better unofficial sources in a formal FAA sanctioned event. Just sayin’.

Skew-T: Scott Denestadt’s seminars are probably the best for that. I wish he had enough folks clamoring for them that he’d resort to selling videos online or something. None of his dates and locations have worked out that I could attend yet. FAA doesn’t test or really acknowledge the Skew-T in anything officially published as guidance so pilots aren’t technically expected to know it. It’s, shall we say, extracurricular, in the view of the FAA. Numerous folks learned of its usefulness over the last couple of decades and word has gotten around to learn it for help with certain types of predictions more as a groundswell thing than any official thing. And that’s not bad at all. Just sayin’ again that it’s not an official weather source, so it doesn’t get much love.

Scott has also talked on here about some of the limitations the Skew-T has, including that many locations are interpolations from the surrounding real radiosonde data, so things may not be as they seem in those specific places.

Paging @scottd ...

 

[mscard88]

I think there are a fair amount and good variety of seminars being offered (at least 'round here). but I want to go to one and LEARN something, not sit around and listen to some dude talk for an hour or two about, well, nothing.

Why? You do that here.

 

[mscard88]

But there have also been duds, like the one about weather resources that started out with basic things such as METARs and TAFs and then soon degenerated into a sales pitch by the presenter. That was a couple of years ago now, and to this day whenever I get an email from FAAST about a webinar, I scroll down to see who the presenter is, and if it's Delia Colvin, I read no further...

Agree. Did one of hers years ago, and it seems I get an email with one of her presentations every week or two. When I see it's her, delete.

 

[denverpilot]

First, I never said that Skew-T are interpolations from the surrounding radiosonde data. Quite the opposite. The forecast soundings are based on hundreds of thousands of other data points from sensors that includes radiosondes, satellite data, aircraft reports (not PIREPS), surface observations, NEXRAD, etc... All this data is run through sophisticated forecast models that creates an analysis of the data and attempts to forecast pressure, temperature, wind, etc. in the future.

I am still doing my two-day weekend workshops. I've got four planned for this year. Includes Portland, OR, Milwaukee, Williamsport, PA and Houston. My program gives you two advanced credits for the Wings program.

Poorly worded on my part from less than in person data. Thanks for the correction.

My point was there’s a lot of interpolation going on unless you’re filtering down to actual radiosonde launch sites. That interpolation is not going to show “the ground fog along the river” that always forms in some places, as you scroll past the locations in a crossing flight plan. They’re tools and one still has to use one’s brain and realize there’s limitations. Lots of them.

Two advanced credits! Wooot! LOL. My theory is back in order! Hahahah.