@idefix37 LOL! No, I don't need 20-30 waypoints for my flight :D.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I do more than one flight over the course of a year and they are to different places. Unless I treat Favorites as a temporary holding area - which I think is less efficient than importing a GPX - it will fill up very quickly.
Thank you but, I'm not sure 20 or 30 favorites is a very workable solution. Making places favorites for one flight plan and then removing them from the list is, I guess, semi-workable, but the SkyVector export/ Windy import seems more efficient than that.
At least to me, (I've been using computerized flight planers since DOS), entering a series of airports or fixes or waypoints seems a basic ground-level function.
I guess, "it's somewhere around here" might be good enough for the broad picture.
Re: Using Windy for Flight Planning
Blake, I came across this video last week. I think it's great, but it also illustrates the main problem I have with using Windy for flight planning.
When you used the Route Planner in the video you ended up picking a completely different airport than you than the one you originally wanted because you couldn't find it.
I've come across the exact same situation. The way the system exists now, you have to have a perfect geographic sense of exactly where the next fixes or the final destination are. If you try to use the search capability to find your destination, you are dumped out of the Route Planner. Return to the Route Planner and it returns to where you started. Back to square 1 and you still can't find your destination airport.
Creating the route in SkyVector, exporting it to a GPX file, and then importing it into Windy is a workaround, but it really shouldn't have to take those steps. Once you do, if you exit the Route Planner in order to get a better full screen picture of the weather (and legend which the Planner blocks), your route disappears.
FWIW, this is probably the one thing that keeps me from becoming a premium subscriber.
@Gkikas-LGPZ said in How to use a route planner:
@midlifeflyer
The planner shows data as they come directly from the models.
TAF is written down by a meteorologist.
Meteorologists can add value to the model data.
A human forecaster has knowledge of the local topography, as well as historical knowledge
of how the land affects the wind, the visibility, cloud bases etc in an area,
and can therefore predict the weather with accuracy.
For flight decisions, is better to rely on TAFs.
Thank you. Depending on the model, I can see similar differences between MOS and TAF forecasts. Switching models in Windy, I can also see differences.
Still trying to get a feel for this for flights. Guess I just need to play with it more.
Two basic question.
While the VFR planner shows all sorts of good information, the IFR planner is very bare. I wonder what went into the decision that IFR pilots don't care about cloud bases and surface visibility.
I'm trying to reconcile METAR/TAF discrepancies with the planner. Fore example, the TAF at Florence, SC (KFLO) at 3 pm today is winds 240 at 10-17 knots, 3,500 overcast with visibility >6 statute miles and light rain showers. If I am reading the Windy chart correctly, while the winds are consistent, I'm seeing a cloud base substantially lower at 1800-2000' and visibility only 1.7 statute miles
