The more things change...

KSCessnaDriver said:
I find it hard to take anything serious you post on here, given the style you have. You appear to not really take this flying business serious and it's people like you that keep me out of Indian Territory as long as I can.
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Settle down, Captain Happy.

 
I totally agree with 6PC regarding the outright silliness of holding on to an archaic method based on long ago obsolete teletype machines when modern technology makes a longer plain english version easy. As he stated, sure it can be mastered but why?

Oh and one should not judge one's seriousness for aviation safety by his jokes or silly videos. One has nothing to do with the other. Unless of course you think folks like Rod Machado or John King with their corny jokes are just silly old fools who don't take aviation seriously.
 
SkyDog58 said:
I totally agree with 6PC regarding the outright silliness of holding on to an archaic method based on long ago obsolete teletype machines when modern technology makes a longer plain english version easy. As he stated, sure it can be mastered but why?
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The reason for the format today has nothing to do with teletypes. But that OWT hangs on.

The format today is due to International standards.

Some of us are old enough to remember the pre-METAR days and the weeping and gnashing of teeth in having to switch to the international standard.

Almost as much weeping and gnashing of teeth as switching from "position and hold" to "line up and wait". :)
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Flammable and inflammable has gotten me into trouble more times than I care to count
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If you see either on a NOTAM or PIREP it's probably best to just stay on the ground.

Nauga, and a roomfull of foom
 
denverpilot said:
The reason for the format today has nothing to do with teletypes. But that OWT hangs on.

The format today is due to International standards.

Some of us are old enough to remember the pre-METAR days and the weeping and gnashing of teeth in having to switch to the international standard.

Almost as much weeping and gnashing of teeth as switching from "position and hold" to "line up and wait". :)
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I'm not saying you are wrong but here are a few links to documents from different sources that seem to support the teletype OWT.

FAA
Rod Machado
Flight Safety
NASA Researcher

As far as international standards, English is the international language of aviaiton and ICAO is why the back of your certificate states "English Proficient". So plain English does make sense.
 
There may be a better way of presenting the information but until they figure something out all the weather and NOTAMs on the release at work are going to be the regular coded form and I still need to know how to read it. I like the short releases from JFK-BOS. I wouldn't want to double the amount of paper being printed.
 
denverpilot said:
But as someone pointed out, it's not inefficient on a global scale. It is a global system after all. The shorthand translation issues affect everyone equally.

Your two assertions as I see them are :
1. It's inefficient.
2. There's better technology.

The inefficiency thing is covered above. Switching it to "all English" isn't exactly efficient. Using a universally known shorthand format for an international standard actually IS the most efficient.
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Actually, English is required around the world for civilian flying.
Further, there is nothing which states that the METAR in the computer cannot stay OVC003 and then translate to the local dialect (which per ICAO is supposed to be English everywhere anyways)

denverpilot said:
Secondly, to the technology point -- what specific technology would you find better?
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A lot. Currently there is a very limited set of categories for NOTAMs. Second, many NOTAMs which are geographic in nature (e.g. tower light out) are tied to an airport. In this day and age, NOTAMs should be tied to GPS coordinates. You also should support multiple NAVAIDs. I am sorry, but I do not want to read about VOR and NDB issues when flying WAAS. If WAAS is down, I am going to dial in a VOR and it is good enough to get me somewhere VMC or I am getting radar vectors.
That is just one example.

denverpilot said:
Not being too critical here, but scanning down a page of the "traditional format" most humans can spot the things they need to know very quickly and without all that much effort and it's FAST to do it that way. I'd much rather do that than flip through ten pages of screens with multiple scroll pages of "English translation" in ForeFlight, so I just hit the left button and go straight to traditional format. I can get crap done WAY faster that way.
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Maybe a professional pilot and a few others can, but no GA pilot who does not fly for a living that I know can do what you are describing.
I know I sure as heck cannot do what you are describing, I also do not want to waste the years of mental energy learning how to do it. Foreflight based on you description makes a decent dent into it, but the reality is this should be built into the system.

Lastly, I am pretty sure NOTAMs are not international standards. METAR and TAF yes, but not NOTAM.

Tim
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Would it bother you if the meter actually said "overcast at 300 feet"?

I made the mistake of comparing aviation weather 2 News weather I get that's apples and oranges. If you were to get the same information in a format that did not require any sort of translation would it be bothersome?

I'd like to point out that I feel like we are actually having a fairly cordial conversation here so I think we can stop saying I don't mean to argue. I think I said that nine times in this thread but this seems to be going very well lol
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To make matters worse they have a different set of shorthand for each source. You have to speak metarese, forecastese(a mix of English metarese and forecastese), notamese, tafese, pirepese... and so on

SERN. Really?, friggin southern! Or is that Southeastern? If it was a whole word you'd know.
 
SkyDog58 said:
As far as international standards, English is the international language of aviaiton and ICAO is why the back of your certificate states "English Proficient". So plain English does make sense.
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Again, not true. You can have an ICAO PPL without knowing a single word of english. English Proficient is FAA language.
 
tspear said:
Actually, English is required around the world for civilian flying.
Further, there is nothing which states that the METAR in the computer cannot stay OVC003 and then translate to the local dialect (which per ICAO is supposed to be English everywhere anyways)
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Which can be done today, so I don't see the problem.


tspear said:
A lot. Currently there is a very limited set of categories for NOTAMs. Second, many NOTAMs which are geographic in nature (e.g. tower light out) are tied to an airport. In this day and age, NOTAMs should be tied to GPS coordinates. You also should support multiple NAVAIDs. I am sorry, but I do not want to read about VOR and NDB issues when flying WAAS. If WAAS is down, I am going to dial in a VOR and it is good enough to get me somewhere VMC or I am getting radar vectors.
That is just one example.
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Go ahead and come up with some more then, because that's not a tech problem. That's a category problem. Publish a spec and add a category and give a little lead time and it's done. The underlying tech for transporting the data doesn't care, and the database schema is all that has to change.


tspear said:
Maybe a professional pilot and a few others can, but no GA pilot who does not fly for a living that I know can do what you are describing.
I know I sure as heck cannot do what you are describing, I also do not want to waste the years of mental energy learning how to do it. Foreflight based on you description makes a decent dent into it, but the reality is this should be built into the system.
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I was no pro a little over a year ago and could do it, and it certainly didn't take me "years of mental energy" to accomplish it. I had to read the format to pass my Private exam just like anyone else does, back when nobody was making "translators" so you just did it. Instructor would sit during ground school and print off the stuff for a flight and you'd go over it, and they'd show you how to scan down a page of them quickly and effectively, and it's not that hard. Slide finger down page if you're lost I suppose, but you'd analyze a page full of them for winds (what's the general direction and highest speeds?), ceilings (it's easy to see where they're low in a page full of them), temps, etc. The old joke was the longer the line the more bad weather was happening at that station, but it's true. Extremely easy to see. I'd even go so far as to say if someone can't figure out how to scan a page of METARs for a route of flight in 30 seconds for the "interesting" weather, they're pretty darn lazy.

tspear said:
Lastly, I am pretty sure NOTAMs are not international standards. METAR and TAF yes, but not NOTAM.

Tim
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Don't know. Doesn't matter much to me.

Still not seeing a "tech" problem. Seeing a human problem of entitlement attitude that scanning a page of data printed in text that's well-delineated with exactly the information you need, is somehow some sort of major "hardship", but completely in disagreement with that. It isn't that hard.

Yeah, if I see "GR" I'll probably have to look it up, but that station and surrounding station info is likely to look bad enough I can probably guess I don't want to fly in it if I don't need to, anyway. The first pass at a page full of METARs is just a go/no-go decision. You only need to focus in on a few stations out of an entire page for details after you've decided the weather is "go" or you know it's "go" only if a couple of stations don't have criteria behind the aircraft capabilities or yours.

If the entire page has piles of OVC and a bunch of those start with "00" there's a good chance I'm not taking that IFR flight for example. I'm not a fan of widespread weather that will force approaches to minimums at every airport within an hour of the destination airport in a no ice capability single. Others may do it all day and not care. Scan down the temp/dew points... yup, confirmed... they're all within a degree or two and temps are all just above freezing. Done. No-go. Took 20 seconds. Didn't have to decode squat. The numbers have away the end game before you even needed more information.
 
SkyDog58 said:
Well, I guess my English is not as proficient as I thought it was as I read the following differently than you do.
Link 1
Link 2
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You're not understanding how the ICAO language endorsement works. It does not have to be English, you can have ICAO French LP6 and happily fly in France with your ICAO PPL.

For example, I speak conversational French, German, and I'm fluent in Swedish and Finnish. Yet, I can not speak those languages in radio as long as I am using the privileges of my FAA PPL, since my ICAO endorsement is only English LP4 (which is what the "English Proficient" limitation on your FAA cert means).
If I would take the radiotelephony test in any of those languages and reach the required LP, and that is - having the endorsement in those languages, I would then be allowed to use that language to communicate over the radio.
That's why when you fly in Spain, you'll hear Airbuses talking Spanish to controllers all the time. And you have airports in France that have "Seulement Francais" listed in the AIM, which means you are not ALLOWED to speak English there.

All of these have to be compatible with METAR standards, and no-one over there would understand plain English METAR messages.
 
I was gonna be a metarologist but everbody down to the general store already talks about the weather and they'd just call me a knowitall.
 
gkainz said:
Oh sure ... just publish a spec change and let the DBA wave his magic SQL wand and change the underlying schema and POOF! All good! :)
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LOL. Like I said, not a technical problem. It's a huge PITA for the humans involved, but the computer doesn't care. ;)
 
steingar said:
I am genuinely interested if this is indeed true, I am not convinced it is. That said, sadly these inexpensive products that give one an unprecedented view of meteorological phenomena have not penetrated fully into GA cockpits for reasons that escape me.
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I sat through two forums at OSH17 that specifically mentioned that VFR into IMC is still a huge issue. A big part of that is because pilots using the latest and greatest are treating the information as if it is current... and it isn't. It can be up to about 10 minutes old, but pilots are treating it like onboard weather radar, and trying to fly through gaps that aren't there any more.
 
Steve Costello said:
I sat through two forums at OSH17 that specifically mentioned that VFR into IMC is still a huge issue. A big part of that is because pilots using the latest and greatest are treating the information as if it is current... and it isn't. It can be up to about 10 minutes old, but pilots are treating it like onboard weather radar, and trying to fly through gaps that aren't there any more.
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Well, also see the link I put up yesterday about massive gaps in FIS-B coverage.

Friends already equipped say the gaps are significantly bigger than the map indicates, too. Just like cellular coverage maps, they're estimated. And wrong.
 
Despite the fact that plain-English translations for METARs, TAFs, etc. are offered in modern equipment and EFBs, I find the coded form to be far more efficient to consume. I can scan a list of METARs, TAFs, NOTAMs, PIREPs, etc. and ingest the information in far less time, and with less likelihood of error, using the coded form. I'm not an advocate of extra work for the sake of work, but I'm also not sure that pilots should want to be spoon-fed everything, either. There are merits to the way the system works today, and those merits may be just as valid today as they were decades ago.


JKG
 
JGoodish said:
There are merits to the way the system works today, and those merits may be just as valid today as they were decades ago.
JKG
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What Merits? A lack of bandwidth? Lack of storage space?

Tim
 
tspear said:
The translation is consistent. If it is not, then either the translation or the specification is bad.
So try for another justification.
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Not the sort of consistency I meant. Consistency of the underlying format. Anyone who learns to read a METAR worldwide can read a METAR worldwide.

Not everyone can read an English translation of a METAR.

We've already been over this. See above. It's a standard.

And those whining about it are pretty funny. It takes far less brain cells that all sorts of other languages I read, regularly.

If someone can't figure out a METAR they've got serious cognitive problems and likely won't do too well on multiple other aspects of aviation.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
I find it hard to take anything serious you post on here, given the style you have. You appear to not really take this flying business serious and it's people like you that keep me out of Indian Territory as long as I can.
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Wow.... Please stay out of Indian country. I don't want to share airspace with you.
 
Law of primacy. If your instructor shows you how to decode a METAR and doesn't tell to just click the decoded weather on Foreflight, it's a no brainer after you do it a few times.
 
jordane93 said:
Law of primacy. If your instructor shows you how to decode a METAR and doesn't tell to just click the decoded weather on Foreflight, it's a no brainer after you do it a few times.
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A piece of paper full of them works better. No way to cheat.

"Tell me if you can safely make this flight. Your dispatcher handed you this sheet of paper."
 
Yea. Yea. Now that this has went on for a while, it is important to make the obvious observation on the original video.


THATS MY AIRPLANE!!
 

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tspear said:
What Merits? A lack of bandwidth? Lack of storage space?

Tim
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I already answered that question in my post.

Since lack of efficiency was cited as a criticism of the current method, I will point out that even if you feel that taking the time to read multiple lines of decoded information instead of a single short line is more "efficient" for you, it's certainly not more efficient to originate and transmit the data in that manner. You'd have a hard time making a rational argument that consuming a plain text report is a more efficient method of consumption, because it simply isn't; several pages of decoded information can be consumed in a single page of coded information. Perhaps the best argument against the coded method is that it requires the end user to memorize the code, but given the relatively simple nature of the code that's hardly an argument about efficiency.


JKG
 
denverpilot said:
A piece of paper full of them works better. No way to cheat.

"Tell me if you can safely make this flight. Your dispatcher handed you this sheet of paper."
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Yea and if they ever want to go to the airlines, your release is going to be in raw METAR, TAF, and NOTAMs.
 
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