About AOPA 414,000 members Largest general aviation organization Virtually all active pilots hours per year Member service Lobbying Offer Jeppesen wx on website:

GA pilot population Certificate levels: Student, Private, Commercial, Airline Transport, Flight Instructor Ratings: Single-engine land, multi-engine land… instrument! Instrument=able to file IFR flight plans, fly by reference to instruments in adverse wx … … when you can’t see where you’re going!

More flying on instruments Better handling, monitoring Traffic advisories, sequencing and separation service Inflight wx info from CWSUs Greater need for pre- and inflight wx Safer, but much more demanding With Internet, more reliance on self- briefing

Approach-avoidance Seems too abstract Similar to pilot-doctor adversarial relationship Only 8 weather-related questions on written private pilot test Can miss them all, and still pass! WX EDUCATION

Dry adiabatic lapse rate Moist adiabatic lapse rate Coriolis force Skew-T log-P Conditional instability SLEEP-INDUCING TERMS

How much weather flying? 503,740 = total pilot population 309,865 = instrument-rated pilots Ergo, 62% of all pilots

IFR TOWER OPS

Briefing strategies, old-school Call FAA-employed weather briefer 1/800/WX-BRIEF Standard, Abbreviated, Outlook briefings Difax “Ring-through” to NWS meteorologists

Briefing stragegies, “New school” FAA subcontracts briefing services to Lockheed-Martin, 2006 Teething problems! 58 Flight Service stations before …. 3 automated stations now (Leesburg, DFW, Prescott AZ) Retirements and new briefers; no local experience

Briefing strategies, “New school” Internet-driven Many, many websites Contact FSS to update and file flight plan only! L-M poor reception

Modern online briefing ADDS Fltplan.com AOPA internet flight planner Unisys WSI, other private wx suppliers DUAT New experimental products

WSI Interactive overlays Route-specific Video synoptics

Cg/vis/wx graphical grids Mouseover function Goes out 12 hours Many elements presented Hourly forecast conditions Ceiling and visibility Only at selected WSFOs …. now

Grids, cont’d Click on a city Scroll down to “Hourly weather graph” Add cg and vis to meteogram elements

Cg/vis/temp/winds graphical grids

ADDS: “old” Airmet

ADDS: G-Airmet

ADDS: CIP

ADDS: FIP

ADDS: Convective Sigmets

ADDS: CCFP

ADDS: NCWF

Problem! The following, alone, are “not for use” by pilots: CCFP (for meteorologists and dispatchers) CIP/FIP (it’s “supplementary”) G-Airmet (it’s not yet operational)

Datalink: Wx in the cockpit

…. Even via handheld GPS units

Summing up Self-briefing= Need for online education FSS wx analysis being bypassed Make experimental products operational Push gridded graphical forecasts 30-hour TAFs at every station Last but not least: Fix Lockheed-Martin problems