Cruising the halls of AOPA Expo this weekend, I (re)discovered a number of Internet weather resources and learned about some new initiatives. There are a bunch of resources out there, so as pilots we have no excuse not to know what the weather picture is. Still, it’s a pain to hunt it all down (yup, we’re trying to simplify that process).
Most pilots do something like this, I found: a hop to AOPA’s weather site; maybe a trip over to ADDS at NOAA for some Java tool swimming; a jaunt to WeatherUnderground.com; load up RTFP or Voyager on the desktop and and wade through the stream of data that is spit back at you.
Besides those, there’s also Pilot My-Cast for your phone, Anywhere Map, WeatherTAP from Trade-a-Plane, DUATS, and more. Still, lots of wading to be done (by the way, until December 2nd you can use the username AOPA2006 and password AOPA2006 for a free tour of WeatherTAP.com).
Lockheed Martin, I learned, has a new initiative that includes dropping kiosks at airports which will let you manage flight plans and (I think) provide some weather data – more weather!
There’s tons out there. The goal here with MyMetar.com is aggregating information that’s available from a variety of sources and making it available to you conveniently. If you see a source of weather we should add, shoot us a link and we’ll explore how to get it plugged in either to your page or to the library.
MyMetar.com, Brick by Brick 