[akschu]

I had some lame stuff happen yesterday. I was zooming from point A to point B in a fantastic tailwind and I was coming up on a cloud layer. I looked at my garmin pilot and it was receiving FIS-B weather (Radar->FIS-B and Clouds->FIS-B on the overlay settings) and it showed dark grey for the next 30-40 miles, but clear again.

I decided that the risk was acceptable because I wouldn't be over the clouds for long given how fast I was moving. Well, I get to the other side and it's completely socked in and I can't get down. I have 3 hours of fuel on board, but going back would take twice as long, so I start searching around for a sucker hole. I eventually found one 10 minutes away and was able to get down, but sucks to go down the poor decision chain that far.

Now that I'm safely on the ground I'm looking at the garmin pilot manual trying to figure out what I was looking at but "FIS-B Tops" doesn't even exist in the manual and the radar colors on page 346 doesn't even show the grey I saw.

Lesson learned, don't trust any of the weather information in the cockpit, but it still begs the question, what was it showing me?

Any information on FIS-B clouds would be great as well as any of the garmin guys explaining what grey over the map signifies as it didn't really map to any weather I was seeing from the air.

 

[Tankerpilot75]

It’s time to evaluate

I suspect when you posted this thread you were willing to accept criticism for attempting VFR flight on top without sufficient training or clearance. It appears you are not IFR rated and therefore did not attempt to pickup an IFR flight plan once you realized your path enroute and likely destination were covered over. My questions are:

1. Did you get a weather briefing/forecast before departure?
2. Did you update that briefing enroute? If not, why not?

Flying is a privilege and with this privilege comes responsibility for the safety of our flight and those that we over fly.

TIS-B weather is always delayed information and should not be used for real time weather decision making. You can use it for strategic decision making (such as staying clear of weather). Most EFIS systems and EFBs with adsb-in weather information allow you to bring up your destination and display current conditions. At least use this if not talking to Flight Service. You seem to be blaming equipment displays more than poor judgment. This is how CFIT accidents happen. Please, please learn from this and do not repeat it. We all make mistakes! It’s critical that we learn from them!

 

[akschu]

It appears you missed the decision making process and the entire paragraph on lessons learned. I do get it, but that doesn’t answer my question as to what information I was getting.

 

[Low Pass]

I'm a long time Garmin Pilot user. Re the in-flight FIS-B weather functions, I only use radar/lightning, METARs and TAFs to manage my flight progress. I don't count on the other GP weather items in flight. Cloud tops is only a forecast anyway. On my smartphone Android GP, I see Clouds overlay is an Internet only function.

I'll be watching your thread to see if there's some thing I'm not understanding or configuring properly.

 

[BillL]

Sorry I use FF, but don't rely on the in flight information. VFR or IFR always get the weather briefing, but also use SketTLogPro app on my phone and iPad. The app has a function that will show the SkewT plot for many positions along the route based on model projections. It has been quite good a keeping awareness of weather/clouds.

SkewTLogPro has been surprisingly effective in reflecting the situation ahead. It even allowed filing an altitude between two icing layers (clouds) that appeared on a segment enroute. The situation was just as predicted. It might be helpful for your flights as well.