Typical Southeast Summer Flying

[Lance F]

Made an interesting trip these last three days...my little Atlanta area airport to TETERBORO and back. As I still consider myself a neophite IFR pilot and having never flown in the northeast , this was a very interesting trip that may be worth a write-up.

However, I had my camera and this shows this afternoon's return while going north of Charlotte at 10K. These scattered thunderstorms (note how the Stormscope strikes on the 430 match the NEXRAD returns) are what we flying down here face everyday - except that some days it's worse

I'm so grateful for the weather tools we have available now. I know that pilots have been slogging around in this stuff for a hundred years without 'em, but I know I sure feel safer!

 

[Iceman]

I agree the weather data available now is wonderful. Having used the nexrad/stormscope for a few trips now it would be hard to go without. I'm just glad there are units like the 396 give the pilot all of the necessary information for a reasonable amount of investment.


I notice your mx-20 has the same screen errors that our's sometimes gets (picture below). Any idea what causes that? I think I'm going to send garmin AT a few pic's in an email and see if they can correct the problem. I'm also a little disappointed that the stormscope data cannot overlay the nexrad data on the mx-20 as it is depicted in their advertisements in flying magazines. Instead it is necessary to use the split screen to show both (see pic below). Overall though it was a great investment.

 

[Lance F]

Chris, I had the camera with me because on the flight up those screen errors were so bad all four Nav boxes on the screen were unreadable. The next waypoint on the screen also had this "scratchiness" all over it. The problem wasn't nearly as bad on the way back as you can see in my picture. I'll call my avionics guy and let you know what he says about this, and please let me know what Garmin tells you. I too would like to see the WX500 output as on overlay on the Map and FIS pages. Both issues are probably firmware.