AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2018 - 18

WAYPOINTS

Putting weather tech to work

BY THOMAS B. HAINES
Editor in Chief

New tools ease weather flying angst

Editor in Chief
TOM HAINES took
his instrument
checkride on his
birthday in 1989.

18 | AOPA PILOT January 2018

LEAVING THE TINY PRIVATE STRIP on the Florida Keys
behind, we climbed into the twilight, headed for a hot
shower and a comfy hotel bed after a long day of loading,
unloading, and flying supplies. We felt fortunate, as those
left behind had no electricity, fresh water, or food in the
early aftermath of Hurricane Irma. Despite many radar
and radio outages, the Miami Center controller was chipper when I called to air file an IFR flight plan-as there
was no cell or internet service on the ground in the Keys.
He cleared me direct to our destination, Lakeland,
Florida, with a climb to 9,000 feet. But the magenta line
on the moving map quickly showed that was not going
to work. Most of southwestern Florida was a brooding
mass of green, yellow, and red, and the magenta line
went right through it. Crystal clear in the Keys, we could
see towering clouds miles ahead, many lighting up in the
darkening sky. I asked the controller for a routing northeast toward Homestead near Miami and then northwest
to Lakeland, hoping to end run the slow-moving mass.
But even that looked iffy, based on the XM WX radar
showing on the Beechcraft Bonanza's multifunction display. Studying the display a bit more and poking around
on the iPad, I determined a better route might be up
the west coast of the peninsula, as the storms were just
onshore and slowly moving east.
The controller helpfully approved my request to
the Cypress VOR and then to Sarasota before turning toward Lakeland. The route and altitude kept us
in visual conditions-always a good goal, especially at
night with weather around. As the night darkened, the
show really started with towering clouds just east of us
continuously flashing like some 1970s disco scene. As
we settled in for the 90-minute flight I was again-as I
frequently am-in awe of the technology available to us
for instrument flight in the twenty-first century. With
the satellite-delivered Nexrad and L3 Stormscope on
the MFD side of the Garmin G500 and on the Garmin
GTN 750 navigator, and with a Garmin FlightStream
510 pumping the radar out to the Pilot app on the iPad, I
was immersed in helpful information, frequently checking METARs along the way for wind speed, barometric
pressure changes, and temperature/dew point spreads.
As one who earned an instrument rating nearly 30
years ago, I flew around in weather for 15 years with
nothing but Flight Watch and hope-feeling lucky once
in a while to have a Stormscope. I'd plow into a dark
cloud, hoping that my last report from Flight Watch was

still accurate and that ATC was looking out for me. The
amazing thing is, it all worked pretty well-but, geez, the
angst of not knowing.
While extremely helpful, in-cockpit radar images,
whether via satellite or FIS-B, are a strategic, not a tactical tool. Some can be as many as 15 minutes old and a lot
can happen in a storm in 15 minutes (see "Proficiency:
Into the WILD," page 86). But this night, we could
clearly see the line between visual and instrument conditions and were easily able to stay on the visual side.
Rounding the bend at Sarasota, we had a clear shot
to Lakeland, as the storms had moved southeast.
Advances in weather technology are not confined to
the cockpit. A few weeks later, looking to head back to
Frederick, Maryland, from the AOPA Fly-In at Tampa, it
was dramatic improvements in preflight planning tools
that helped me complete a flight that 18 hours earlier
I was convinced would not happen. An unusual series
of low pressure systems, a cold front, and a couple of
troughs along the East Coast had forecasters flummoxed that weekend. On Saturday morning I had made
up my mind that I would not be going home Sunday
because of the forecast for convection and heavy wind,
rain, and turbulence along the route and the possibility of icing. But as Saturday progressed, the Sunday
forecasts improved. Saturday evening I dove into the
Aviation Weather Center's amazing new forecast tools
for convection, turbulence, and icing. The Graphical
Turbulence Guidance and graphical icing forecast
tools are especially impressive. The tools suggested the
freezing levels would be above me along the coast and
turbulence would not be as bad as originally forecast.
The convection forecasts went away completely. I went
to bed thinking I might make it home Sunday after all.
Sunday morning, the forecasts were turning out to
be accurate. I took off and with 35 to 40 knots of tailwind zoomed to a fuel stop in South Carolina in clear
skies, where I checked weather again. A couple of hours
later I was touching down in Frederick after dodging rain
showers, but hardly getting wet. As forecast, an hour later
the airport was below minimums in mist and heavy rain.
Flying on the gauges still suffers no fools, but flying
blind is not as foolish as it once was.
AOPA
EMAIL thomas.haines@aopa.org
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2018

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