Foreflight/Stratus wx push

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
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west Texas
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Dave Taylor
Many times flying along I am watching the weather >100 mi from dest., and on the Airports tab the weather is "26 min old"
Is there an option to ask for the one minute updates?
Or do they only push them when some parameter has changed by x amount?
Yes, lots of times I am interested in wx along the route when I'm not in radio range yet, ref. other thread about 'bugs'.
 
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Stratus gives you the updates as they are updated at the airport in question.
 
I guess I am not understanding that, in each case the asos was giving 1-minute updates all day long, yet Stratus was putting out weather that was many minutes old.

And the wx had changed, at least in winds, if not many other parts of it.

Eg recent arrival, too far out to get asos. Saw clouds, (30min old) Stratus report was ovc so I did not cancel. Started picking up asos; 'few then clear'. Stratus was still not giving me current asos weather at this time.
 
I believe ADS-B weather (ie: TIS-B ) includes METARs, not AWOS/ASOS. So unless there's an exceptional update (ie: not hourly) to the airport's METAR, you'll only see hourly updates via ADS-B, regardless of which hardware combination you use.
 
I once looked up the definition of gust factor which led me to how metars work and how they differed from ASOS and then I realized that there was no way I would retain all of that information.

METARs are usually only reported once per hour. Foreflight + Stratus is displaying the most current information available.
 
Really? All that effort to connect the airplane to the web* and we get 1hr old weather? I bet that changes in the next few years.
*seems to me it must be to get all the other data

edit for typo
 
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Stratus gets what the government broadcasts through ADS-B. It has no means to ask for a push of updated weather. Whenever the ADS message is sent with the data, assuming the stratus can receive the transmission, you'll have it.
 
jesse said:
Stratus gets what the government broadcasts through ADS-B. It has no means to ask for a push of updated weather. Whenever the ADS message is sent with the data, assuming the stratus can receive the transmission, you'll have it.
Click to expand...

Thanks Jesse. Imo, this new system seems slightly lacking. I wonder if private enterprise would have done better with it. Or maybe improvements are on the way. Would be nice to get radar motion.....and satellite at all. (and lose the traffic ghosts...I have started to ignore them, hopefully not to my peril later).
 
I think METARs are less susceptible to transient weather events and provide a better product for planning. Lots of folks here could speak better to this, but I think that the METAR gives you a filtered and average statwment of recent conditions at an airport, while an ASOS would give you information that would be relevant to an imminent landing.
 
happypilot876 said:
I believe ADS-B weather (ie: TIS-B ) includes METARs, not AWOS/ASOS. So unless there's an exceptional update (ie: not hourly) to the airport's METAR, you'll only see hourly updates via ADS-B, regardless of which hardware combination you use.
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^^^this^^^

METARS are only updated once an hour, typically at 53 minutes after the hour. Why? I have no ID. More would clutter the system maybe?
 
timwinters said:
METARS are only updated once an hour, typically at 53 minutes after the hour. Why? I have no ID. More would clutter the system maybe?
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Yesteryear's bandwidth and storage limitations, I would guess, for the once per hour rule.

As for the 53 minutes, I assume that somebody long ago observed that flights depart on the hour more commonly than at other times, and issuing a report 7 minutes before then will best meet the needs for fresh info, given that it is updated hourly.
 
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Can you imagine the bandwidth and processing required if 13,000 airports were sending AWOS data every minute?
 
Probably more than a government server/setup can handle....but consider for example that Microsoft issues an OS update to a zillion computers and somehow all that data is transferred in a very short time. I bet sometime in the future one-minute weather capability via Stratus is figured out. Each device only needs the wx for a couple of airports at a time, and there are maybe several thousand at the most seeking such data all across the country at one time?
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Probably more than a government server/setup can handle....but consider for example that Microsoft issues an OS update to a zillion computers and somehow all that data is transferred in a very short time. I bet sometime in the future one-minute weather capability via Stratus is figured out. Each device only needs the wx for a couple of airports at a time, and there are maybe several thousand at the most seeking such data all across the country at one time?
Click to expand...

So, how long would it take to download a MS update if it was limited to the ADS-B UAT ground station capability of roughly 15 kbits of payload being broadcast per second? :rolleyes: This technology is not the internet.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Thanks Jesse. Imo, this new system seems slightly lacking. I wonder if private enterprise would have done better with it. Or maybe improvements are on the way. Would be nice to get radar motion.....and satellite at all. (and lose the traffic ghosts...I have started to ignore them, hopefully not to my peril later).
Click to expand...

I believe the FAA contracted with a company to install and operate the ADS-B towers. That's probably the best of both worlds, as I doubt any private company would have gone and installed the towers on their own without planning on a substantial revenue stream to back them up. And that revenue stream would have equaled us each having to pay for weather in-flight, removing what I think is one of the substantial benefits of ADS-B.

As for the radar motion, if you have ForeFlight + a Stratus then you have radar motion today.

With a Stratus 1 ForeFlight caches up to 30 minutes of radar and will loop that when you press the "Play" button on the Maps page, as long as you keep ForeFlight open all the time.

Even better: if you have a Stratus 2 it caches up to 30 minutes of radar data internally so you can sleep your iPad; then when you turn the iPad on (or reopen ForeFlight if you had just switched to another app) the Stratus 2 automatically sends all of that data to ForeFlight so your "play" button is enabled from the get-go.

- Josh
 
Wow, how times have changed

I remember having to call Flight Service in route to get the latest METAR and thinking how fortunate it was to have that available. Now, what, I can't get 1 minute updates? this sucks...
 
Now, what, I can't get 1 minute updates? this sucks...
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It's not that bad, John - as I said "this new system seems slightly lacking"

Josh, I will try again - but every time in the past I am not getting radar motion nor any satellite. I am in an area that has 1 tower sometimes, maybe that is it.
Thank you.
 
jkgoblue said:
Wow, how times have changed

I remember having to call Flight Service in route to get the latest METAR and thinking how fortunate it was to have that available. Now, what, I can't get 1 minute updates? this sucks...
Click to expand...

If you thought you were getting one minute data, you were mistaken. You were never given the 1 minute version of the METAR when you called FSS, just the last version that was transmitted to the NWS on an hourly basis. Of course, if there was a special update sent to the NWS, you would get that.
 
Not all weather stations update to the NWS at the same rate. For example, when I was managing LXV, we had an ASOS that updated every minute and sent those update to the NWS at almost the same rate. At my current airport BGF, we have an AWOS-3 that when I first got here wasn't uploading to the NWS at all. How we use a third party service to send that information to the NWS 3 times an hour :15, :35, and :55 past the hour. I don't know if that's the same for the airport in question, but that's how it works around this state at least.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
It's not that bad, John - as I said "this new system seems slightly lacking"

Josh, I will try again - but every time in the past I am not getting radar motion nor any satellite. I am in an area that has 1 tower sometimes, maybe that is it.
Thank you.
Click to expand...

Satellite (ie: Visual or IR clouds) aren't broadcast via ADS-B, so won't be available in-flight with the Stratus. But the radar should. If you have trouble getting it to work, email team@foreflight.com for assistance.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Thanks Jesse. Imo, this new system seems slightly lacking. I wonder if private enterprise would have done better with it. Or maybe improvements are on the way. Would be nice to get radar motion.....and satellite at all. (and lose the traffic ghosts...I have started to ignore them, hopefully not to my peril later).
Click to expand...
Sirius XM has been in the biz for years, long before ADS-B and hasn't done much better in terms of time. In terms of aviation weather products, which is what all aviation weather systems are providing, the best that can be provided is, well, the aviation weather products.

Purely private? Sure. Maybe someone will come along and tie directly into the AWOS/ASOS system and provide the current readings as they come along. Or, if you want to spend for full Internet access in your aircraft, you can always fire up your browser and get whatever you want, government-sponsored or not.

Radar? You are getting information in the cockpit that, within a few minutes, is pretty much what the Weather Channel has (which is not real-time either).

Considering that 5 years ago we didn't even have an iPad I have no doubt there will be improvements in the future. But, so far anyway, I can't whine too much about getting currently-available METARs, TAFS and NOTAMs and enough radar information to make decent diversion decisions.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Thanks Jesse. Imo, this new system seems slightly lacking. I wonder if private enterprise would have done better with it. Or maybe improvements are on the way. Would be nice to get radar motion.....and satellite at all. (and lose the traffic ghosts...I have started to ignore them, hopefully not to my peril later).
Click to expand...


Slightly lacking is a severe understatement. Private enterprise won't be competing with government anymore. They killed that. Nobody is going to compete head to head with an organization with the equivalent of free loans and unlimited capital behind it. Even if that organization can't get it right, the chance that they'll just announce they killed your product by building an identical one they don't have to pay for not pay back, is way too high a risk unless you've got assurances from their bankers that they'll stay out of your niche. (In other words you've purchased a Congresscritter.)

LDJones said:
Can you imagine the bandwidth and processing required if 13,000 airports were sending AWOS data every minute?
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Yes. And a system to be able to query out only the tiny part of that data you want transmitted to the aircraft, even.

Cakewalk. Wouldn't be that hard in modern IT. Yawner even.
 
denverpilot said:
Slightly lacking is a severe understatement. Private enterprise won't be competing with government anymore. They killed that. Nobody is going to compete head to head with an organization with the equivalent of free loans and unlimited capital behind it. Even if that organization can't get it right, the chance that they'll just announce they killed your product by building an identical one they don't have to pay for not pay back, is way too high a risk unless you've got assurances from their bankers that they'll stay out of your niche. (In other words you've purchased a Congresscritter.)




Yes. And a system to be able to query out only the tiny part of that data you want transmitted to the aircraft, even.

Cakewalk. Wouldn't be that hard in modern IT. Yawner even.
Click to expand...

Yeah, 13,000 events per minute is absolutely nothing. Those events are also tiny. Maybe an average of 74 bytes per event. Without any compression that'd take what 128 kilobit per second? Come up with a better format for the data than an ASCII string and throw some compression in and it'd be WAY WAY less.

But yeah, way beyond the means of ADS-B, which is a poor excuse for a "Next Gen" system in 2015.

I could handle the load of storing and querying that data to pretty much any scale with about three clicks on Amazon Web Services. That's only a data set of about 500 GB per year.
 
Heh. We had another interview. The guy wouldn't stop saying he was interested in working in "big data", the modern buzzword.

I sooooo wanted to interrupt him and say, "We're kinda into smaller useful datasets here, with really important data in them that we work on getting to customers quickly and efficiently while keeping storage costs low."

I bit my lip and shook my head instead, since it was a phone interview. LOL.
 
Thanks, Scott. That's informative.

But is there a way to have FF/Stratus fetch ADS-B data that was already broadcast?

For example, this happened on my trip last weekend. I use FF on my iPad for a pre-flight wx check at 1530Z. I turn it off, load up the airplane, and am finally off the ground and within range of ADS-B towers at 1615Z. FF still displays the destination METAR from 1455Z, already 80 minutes old.

Is there a way for it to go back and fetch the 1555Z METAR, or do I have to wait until the 1655Z broadcast for an update?
 
Pilawt said:
Thanks, Scott. That's informative.

But is there a way to have FF/Stratus fetch ADS-B data that was already broadcast?

For example, this happened on my trip last weekend. I use FF on my iPad for a pre-flight wx check at 1530Z. I turn it off, load up the airplane, and am finally off the ground and within range of ADS-B towers at 1615Z. FF still displays the destination METAR from 1455Z, already 80 minutes old.

Is there a way for it to go back and fetch the 1555Z METAR, or do I have to wait until the 1655Z broadcast for an update?
Click to expand...

The cached data will remain available until the Stratus receives an updated report. It will also indicate that the report was received via ADS-B. I have sat at my airport which has a GBT located near my hangar. I start out with all the METAR data shown as the original version from the internet. It takes about ten minutes or so before the airports around me are all filled in with updated data. It is all dependent on the GBT broadcasting updated data and the Stratus receiving it. Once the Stratus receives the updated METAR data, it is noted as being from ADS-B and available for display. Not all METAR reports are updated at the same point in time and this is spread out over an update cycle of at least 5 minutes or more.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Thanks Jesse. Imo, this new system seems slightly lacking. I wonder if private enterprise would have done better with it. Or maybe improvements are on the way. Would be nice to get radar motion.....and satellite at all. (and lose the traffic ghosts...I have started to ignore them, hopefully not to my peril later).
Click to expand...

In order to have what you want, you would need a full time link to the Internet, that would drive the costs up, or we'd have to restructure how the Internet is billed.
 
Pilawt said:
Is there a way for it to go back and fetch the 1555Z METAR, or do I have to wait until the 1655Z broadcast for an update?
Click to expand...

ADS-B weather(FIS-B ) is sent out in a loop. The table is in the AIM (4-5-2) and METARs are retransmitted every 5 minutes. I just turned on my receiver here at home with 2 ground stations visible and had the latest(from the last hour) METARs in a couple minutes.
 
timwinters said:
^^^this^^^

METARS are only updated once an hour, typically at 53 minutes after the hour. Why? I have no ID. More would clutter the system maybe?
Click to expand...

I have noticed that the big airports like KRDU with ATIS only update about once an hour. For my home airport (non-towered) I can count on an update every 10-15 minutes or so.

This does not go for every non-towered airport. Some only seem to update once an hour, but most in my area update every 10-15 minutes. I can't find any pattern or reason for this.
 
Henning said:
In order to have what you want, you would need a full time link to the Internet, that would drive the costs up, or we'd have to restructure how the Internet is billed.
Click to expand...

I would guess the best solution for AWOS is to run it on a cellular data network. 2GB per month is like 15 bucks. I don't think a 200 charachter message sent every 15 minutes would get anywhere near 2GB in a month
 
ATIS is typically always hourly unless there have been significant changes that warrant an update.
 
If the airport in question is non-towered, then you will get an update from an AWOS/ASOS once per hour. Period. You'll need to be in range to get anything updated any sooner.

You might want to check a towered airport close by for a SPECI obs or a changed ATIS.

But the AWOS/ASOS at a non-towered field phones home once an hour regardless. . . . .
 
comanchepilot said:
If the airport in question is non-towered, then you will get an update from an AWOS/ASOS once per hour. Period. You'll need to be in range to get anything updated any sooner.
Click to expand...

In my area most of them are updated every 10-15 minutes. Some update only once an hour. Cant figure out why
 
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