Taxi into Position

As a sign of things to come, the University of North Dakota’s Aerospace team have just started putting out some flight training video podcasts combining computer-generated in-flight footage with real video, narrated by Anthony Bottini, one of the UND CFIs. Previously only found on quite expensive DVD and CD ROM kits, these types of multimedia presentations are a great way to create engaging training material and I’ll be following their progress with great interest.I was browsing the web site for x-plane, my personal favorite flight simulator (Mac, PC and Linux, well worth a look if you havent tried it yet) and came across the link to the UND podcasts.

After a bit of investigation I found out that the meteorological feature stretching north-south across central Texas was the Dry Line and it has some unique effects on the weather in the south west.As I described in a previous post, I have a variety of current weather charts from the NOAA National Weather Service displayed on my desktop, a number of which come from their Prognostic Charts page…. The venerable FAA Aviation Weather textbook (AC00-6A, p76) did have this to say on the subject:”Dew Point Front or Dry Line: During a considerable part of the year, dew point fronts are common in Western Texas and New Mexico northward over the Plains States.