XM Radio (I mean weather)

[T-DOGGIN]

Those of you using XM weather onboard how much do you actually use this service (with the exception of coast to coast and overseas) The boss wants us to get it but I feel like it may be a deterent in some situations. I personally have flown around or over weather with no problems and when we landed I pulled up WSI radar and it showed Level 3-4 as far as the eye can see. Of course we really painted nothing onboard and no real precip or bumps.

On another note will XM or sirrus work on the airplane using a portable unit?

 

[fly4kix]

We have it displayed on a Fujitsu tablet PC. We tend to use it more in summer months with storms and such, otherwise like you said only on long coast to coast trips with a iffy forecast. It tends to make the radar look worse than it is and initially on the tablet it's not too user friendly to get everything it will do out there.

It is nice that that everything updates every 5-10 minutes and when it's up and running never have to worry about a weather room you can't get in edgewise.

 

[SabreFlyR]

We have XM weather displayed on our efb and find it simple to use. The only cumbersome part is putting in our flight plan, but once in it's a great tool to watch how the weather is going to affect your route. Now most of our trips are 1000 miles or more with very few regional trips. Just like the WSI radar at the fbo you have to learn to interpret what your looking at.

Look at this way, it's another tool to have just incase. I once had the radar quit shortly after takeoff and the weather was not pretty, in fact there were several tornados in that area later in the day. Using the XM radar and lightening strikes modes we were at least able to figure out a path without getting into something bad.

 

[cptsesso]

We bought a Garmin 396 with the full weather and music package. It is an amazing little unit for the price. Works great in the cockpit and you could also take it out and switch to Automotive mode and now you have a car GPS. Just enter an address and go. There is also a Marine mode, but I don't boat much.

As far as usefulness goes, hours after you last saw a weather computer, it is nice to look out across the country and have an actual picture of what is going on right now. We routinely fly coast to coast and this makes it a great tool.

On one trip we hit some turbulence and I looked up at the Garmin and saw the little airplane symbol crossing the Cold Front Symbol on the map. After we were clear of the front, the turbulence was gone. I thought that was pretty darn cool.

Sort of like SabreFlyR above, we also had a radar issue. Our Avidyne 850 MFD/Radar display died before leaving for home, and the Garmin proved itself very usefull. It enabled us to see the developing weather across the US far enough ahead of time to make the necessary slight diversions to maintain clear of thunderstorms to satisfy the MEL for the Avidyne MFD and radar. The boss said it paid for itself right there.

 

[a&p cfiguy]

I've been using Anywhere Map with WX for the past 3 months and I can't imagine flying without it! There's nothing like having weather in the cockpit! Not just radar pictures, but METARs and TAFs as well. One time my destination was fogged in at 500 RVR. I knew about it more than 100 miles away and that I would need to come up with an alternate. Anywheremap uses color coded boxes displayed next to the airports to denote ceiling and visibility. Red over red means IFR, Maroon over Maroon means hard IFR (close to or below minimums), yellow over yellow MFR, etc. Then you can just click on that box and it gives you the actual METAR right there. Very easy to use. All I had to do is zoom out a bit til I saw something better. I found an airport 40 miles away that was red over yellow and was able to shoot the approach in. Funny thing was I had more and better information than ATC had! ATC had no idea what the weather was at that alternate. I told him, no problem I've got it right here.

As far as NEXRAD goes, it just gives you a little bit more comfort especially flying night IFR. You know that you're not about to fly right into level 4 stuff. If you see it, you can just ask ATC to deviate. A lot of times, they are too busy or just don't care to deal with you if you don't have onboard weather. But if you do and ask to deviate 20 to the left, they're more than happy to accomidate you. And yes, sometimes I think the images may exagerate the returns. But once you get used to using it, you know what's what and what you can and can't fly through. Of course, sometimes if you are so equipped, you can go right over the top of some storms and that won't be reflected. That's where onboard radar would come in handy! Onboard is great for the local area, sat wx is great for the overall picture. Would be great to have both, but you can get sat wx for about 2000 bucks. Start with that. Go to anywheremap.com and look at that product. I think it WAY exceeds the Garmin 396. And yes, you can patch a DELPHI or any XM radio reciever and get perfect reception of over 100 channels. Truely awesome for those long trips. Sirrius does not offer weather, so you'll have to go with XM, which is probably better anyway. If you have XM weather, you can get XM radio under a family plan for only an additonal 6.99 per radio. Well worth it.

Get it! Awesome tool.