Weather Briefs

[Bryan Wood]

Have any of you gotten a brief lately and been asked boatloads of personal questions? I haven't had this pleasure yet, but my father in law told me about it this morning. Apparently they wanted his name, cell, home phone, emergency contact number, age, ratings, total time, type aircraft owned, etc... This all goes into their computer and they know everything about you when you call. Any thoughts? To me it sounds like it could be a good idea, but it somehow feels wrong. I guess it feels like "Fees."

[Don Jones]

They are creating a profile for everyone who calls in, so they have it in the computer system. Supposedly they are trying to taylor the briefing to the caller's level of experience, etc.

I am just happy they started answering the phone again!

[grover]

none of their bloody business.

[Ironflight]

You can get a weather briefing on the phone?! How quaint......I haven't done that for years! Online, I get what I want, the way I want it, on my schedule....

[RV8N]

Originally Posted by Ironflight

You can get a weather briefing on the phone?! How quaint......I haven't done that for years! Online, I get what I want, the way I want it, on my schedule....

Unfortunately we don't all have a Blackberry paid for by the government...

Karl

Now in Sandpoint, ID.

[scard]

When we did our trip to Minnesota a couple of weeks ago, I was in a major mode of "abundance of caution" and called to get a standard briefing the morning of departure. I had been pouring over weather and flight data for each of the previous three days for this trip and had a much better picture than someone that is picking it up on the fly.

The briefer did indeed begin asking all kinds of crazy questions, some of which would have been relevant if I were filing, some not. I gave a couple of answers before I stopped him and told him I only needed a standard briefing. I had to repeat that three times before he understood that wasn't filling and had no intent of giving all kinds of personal information. He did ask age, total time; I think that is where I stopped him .

So here I am on the phone getting my briefing with weathermeister open in one window and noaa.gov open in another, following right along. After the 25min briefing was over, I thanked him for his time and hung up the phone. I turned to Tanya who had the car all packed and was waiting to go, and said something like "that was a complete waste of time". It really was. With modern resources, our access to useful data is fantastic. I've been a pilot since the early '90s and do remember when the telephone briefing was a critical part of the process. Hey, we didn't even have GPS or autopilots in light aircraft back then .

I guess the telephone or in-flight briefing still has its place if you are somewhere that you don't have access to a basic computer with internet access. It is a rare occasion that I'm going to that place anyway. So, I did this exercise recently and confirmed for myself, after not having gotten a fss briefing for many years, that it is indeed not so useful.

[Jerry Cochran]

Since we've been using the indispensible WXMeister, I've called only once for help. Last March we were trying to get into Santa Rosa, CA from up north and had to park near Sacramento while nastiness blew thru. Nice guy at avionics shop there let me use his computer so dialed up WXMeister and called flight brief . Briefer was in AZ looking at same info I was, but had more WX knowledge, told me stuff would move S in an hour. Sure enough, it did and we slid on in. Very helpful fellow, but seldom needed with Dan's excellent tool. Best $6/mo you can spend.

Jerry