Posts under ‘Weather’

If you haven’t already seen it, the latest copy of the FAA’s Safety Briefing is available as a PDF download from their website: http://www.faa.gov/news/safety_briefing/ and it has some really useful weather-related articles this month.
This month’s edition covers topics like:

Weather flying - a framework for the go/no-go decision
Density Altitude - what is it, what can it [...]

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.

One of the side benefits of aviation is a greater interest in the weather.

Mr Robinson developed this e-book from his experiences teaching meteorology to pilots and his desire to spread his knowledge of his field to as many people as possible. Its written in a very readable style based on real world examples rather that the traditional theoretical approach found in other texts.There are any number of excellent texts discussing aviation-related weather, some of my favorites being Robert Buck’s Weather Flying, Thomas Horne’s Flying America’s Weather and Jeppesen’s Aviation Weather is also a very well illustrated text book.

A question from yesterday’s Sport Pilot quiz highlighted one of topics that isn’t difficult but requires a bit of memorization to make it stick - weather minimums in different classes of airspace.The question was as follows:Light Sport Pilot Question: 0205_15During operations within Class E airspace at altitudes of less than 1,200 feet AGL, the minimum horizontal distance from clouds requirement for flight is: A - 500 feetB - 1000 feetC - 2000 feetThe correct answer is B. During operations within Class E airspace at altitudes of less than 1,200 feet AGL, the minimum horizontal distance from clouds requirement for flight is 2000 feet.