windy-plugin-fp

[niio]

Is this thread still active? The flight planner is great. I have been using it to plan a route to take advantage of winds aloft. Pulling the aircraft location along the IFR window I see ground speed in addition to airspeed on the popup window that moves along the route and the forecast updates as it moves along. This is really nice functionality.

The problem I have is that the forecast updates on elapsed time according to airspeed alone, so after a day of flying the forecast updates to the wrong time. With a hundred knot tailwind after a day I am thousands of miles beyond where it thinks I am. The same thing shows up in the flight planner panel, where the elapsed time does not include the impact of tailwinds. Am I missing something?

Here is the route if you are interested.

[niio]

@niio As an update when I reloaded the plugin and the flight plan, then ran 'play' for the forecast all the ground speed data also loaded. It looks like the air speeds were taken from zero elevation even though the flight plan and wind displayed was from 39kft.

[Korina]

@niio @rittels Might have more insight.

[rittels]

@niio

Hi

Thanks for using the plugin.

Do you click the Read Wx button?

[rittels]

@niio

Draw the flightplan and set the departure time.

Then: click Read Wx. This loads the forecast data for the route from the windy backend, and interpolates it for the time when you reach that point. I then calculate the ground speed, and with the GS, calculate the time you when you will read the next point.

Then: Open the routeplanner.

If you Read Wx when the routeplanner is open, it should update.

The purpose of the Read Wx button is to prevent continuous calls to the server, so it is only done once you have drawn the flightplan.

Hope it helps.

[niio]

@rittels I have the flight plan saved in a .gpx file. I opened windy, then opened the flight plan plugin, then loaded my saved flight plan. All the ground speeds in the waypoint list updated immediately with the surface altitude winds, even though the waypoints are all at 39kft. Pressing the 'Read Wx' button does nothing.

[niio]

@niio In addition, the altitude line in the route planner goes to 45k or 50ft on certain legs even though the waypoint altitudes are never that high. The wind speed and direction in the window that follows the airplane icon stays at surface, even though the map is showing wind and direction at 39kft.

[niio]

@niio I tried making a new flight plan and the 'read wx' button worked, at least in part. Three quarters of the waypoints updated with wind speed at altitude but some did not. I could not see an obvious connection between the ones that wouldn't update and a second click of the wx button did nothing more. So the original problem is with saved routes.

[rittels]

@niio

Thanks. There is indeed a bug in uploading the gpx file. I will try to fix it this weekend.

In the meantime, once you have uploaded, just set 'n new start time. This will reset the read weather data, then click read Wx again, and it should read correctly.

[niio]

@rittels I think the waypoints that did not update were over mountain ranges, so the improperly selected zero msl elevation wind chart would not have had any data.