SUGGESTION from Professional pilot
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Hi there,
I love your app and I use it everyday for flying across the europe region. I find very useful the rain prediction as well as cloudbase and meteogram for each airport. However, I see quite a big space for improvement in the area of aviation forecast. There are only a few aviation apps which are good and you have the potential to be the best. there is some sort of metar/taf/notam access via windy but it can be way better and I am sure pilots around the globe would love to finally have an app for aviation weather.
Please if you are interested in my help, please send me an email gofroj@gmail.com
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Hello ! :)
Could you tell us what your main ideas for improvement are ?
Indeed Windy is a great tool to have a quick access to general weather like surface wind, cloud base, temperature... You can also see Jetstreams patterns but I doubt general aviation pilots are interested in jetstream for flight planning... You can also quickly see lows and high pressure systems... With some experience you can locate warm and cold fronts... Of course, notams, taf and metar are accessible with recent tafs which is great ! And I was about to forget the awesome RADAR data !!!!!!!!
As you know however, aviation weather is more than that and it has to be provided in a very professional and standardized way. This involves for instance "significant weather charts", which are always drawn by forecasters on a regular basis after a careful analysis of multiples parameters including pilot reports.
This is why you should never rely on Windy for flight planning or any other app (free or not) that doesn't provide professional charts and data. The best solution for me to fly VFR or IFR on small planes is to rely on the aviation met service of the country I intend to fly. It's 99% of the time free and you get official aviation weather. For that reason, I never use an non official app to get aviation weather forecasts. (Or yes...there are private professional providers like rocket route... Jeppesen... Those are expensive though).
Regarding those charts:
I think Windy uses open data to provide us this awesome automated tool. Data like aviation charts or cold / warm fronts, which are not automatically generated (drawn by someone), cannot be used by windy as far as I know.See you in the sky !
Gab
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Hi Gab, Thanks for your answer. I see you are 320 driver, I am on the other side of the barricade on 737 :))
Obviously, before every flight you check all approved sources for TAF METARS SIGMETS etc, that is usually on company IPAD etc.
However, with windy you can get better picture about the weather then any metar. And it gives you different source of information to consider. I am sure you have already experienced very "relaxed" way of forecasting the weather in southern parts of Europe. Sometimes, TAF is cavok and when you arrive, you find yourself circling around numerous TCs.
Do you know app Pilot Weather? Very useful tool for quick access of the aviation weather. Almost everyone I know uses this app, not really for operational decisions but for generic planning of the day. I believe if you combine this kind of layout with a bit better search functions, groupings of the dept arr alts airports with the radar feed and rain/thunderstorm forecast+meteogram for the location of particular airport and enroute, you can build a bigger and more thorough picture of a weather you can expect.
Currently there is a function of searching particular airports and see metar and tafs. I am talking about developing this area whit data that are already in windy app.Happy landings,
Petr
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737! So you'll win the air race ;)
I think that windy is great to have access to Metars and Tafs and don't know much about pilot weather app, I'll check it. I have always considered that without forecasters analysis, you could never create a real pilot weather app... I see all existing aviation weather app as gadgets which don't really bring something more useful than having quick access to metars and tafs... But... You're right when you say that Windy could be a great platform to create a great and leading edge tool for general aviation or more.
I can imagine a dedicated menu on windy webpage (simply by using and improving the "airport menu"), with simple entries like "departure OACI", "arrival OACI", "time of departure", "plane speed (no wind)", "intended altitude" and waypoints... Actually, there is an online tool which is awesome to do that:
Look at the sigmet layer and route entry... Very simple.
To be able to use the flight planning features of this app using windy would be amazing (except briefing and filing parts, we don't need that...). That would bring something new to the world thanks to Windy "moving wind particles" + TRUE RADAR DATA and LIGHTNINGS. (skyvector doesn't use real radar data).
To have a great weather tool for aviation, Windy will need to use:
-Radar data (OK)
-Wind data at different altitudes (OK)
-Clouds layers (tops, base, ect, OK)
-OACI airports database (OK)
-OACI Waypoints database (free)
-OACI VFR and IFR charts layers (free)
-Sigmet layer (sigmet messages are free but need ot be coded to be shown on the map)
-A dedicated page/menu with interactive entries to enter a route using OACI info with a desired altitude, and at least airplane speed. (don't know if it's possible on windy as I'm not a developer)=> you could see the route on Windy map, and switch between determined aviation layers (radar, clouds, sigmets, navigation charts...)
=> A monster feature would be to have the vertical cross section of the flight path, showed on a kind of airgram that Windy already uses.
I'm in a hurry, I don't have much time to give you more details and correct my terrible written english but just look the skyvector thing, it's awesome and a windy version would be just perfect.
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@Gabou971
https://community.windy.com/topic/4833/meteogram-on-a-routeHope, someday, Ivo will implement X-sections into Windy.
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Nice !
Regarding aviation weather, I think that a sigmet layer would be a nice feature to add to Windy, waiting for something more detailed in few years/months, who knows? It doesn't seem "too hard" to implement as a new layer...
https://www.aviationweather.gov/sigmet
I wish I could help with coding and developing such tools... But I was to lazy during the programming and coding courses at school :)
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+1, good idea and useful for pilots
