Cell phones in planes?
svanarts said:
If you're going to roll your own ASOS what about calling it on the phone rather than having it broadcast? You could check weather from any stop enroute, or if have a fairly modern headset and a cell phone you can call it in flight. Are there any low cost weather stations that have phone in capability?
Cell phones are not typical "aviation" technique in the strict AIM/FAR sense, but understand the cell phones have some basic web browsing and pay to view weather services, which are absolutely cool and no doubt could be used. Really I am out of touch. My cel phone does not have a camera or web browser, I don't have text messaging either. I do have a iPaq PDA with WiFi web browsing and can down load a gob of data for later viewing, but its not useful for actual real time in-flight data link to the web. Got to get one of those fancy cell phones, but for now all I want to do is talk on it. Yes I am boring.
The "standard" that all pilots should know and routinely use is the VHF COM radio. If you have a radio call ATC or FSS or listen for local fields in the vicinity with ATIS/ASOS or call FSS for general area WX. That is usually plan "A" any way. However the question is how to set up a roll your own AWOS.
Do you only want weather info available only to local pilots who know to call a phone number airborne and have a phone, or do you want to have transient pilots also have the info. A VHF broadcast of the weather would be best for all pilots. The local guys are the ones who probably need it least.
For a fly-In air park community it does make more sense. Having additional notes broadcast regarding nose abatement and restrictions would help transient pilots from doing something rude.
What do you really NEED to know: wind, baro, temp followed by cloud/ceiling and visibility. The good old windsock takes care of the wind which is the only thing you really need. Temp should not be a big secret. Altimeter from a nearby airport's ATIS/AWOS or even ATC or FSS should give an approximate setting. The latter two, vis/ceiling, don't lend themselves to consumer weather stations, but its easily estimated by the old Mark V EB's (eyeball's). Of course IFR Ops are a differnt issue. If there's an instrument approach, acceptable weather observations is available.
I think the real question is how to get REAL time weather for a small field with no weather service , automatic or observed. With technology it seems very simple to utilize a consumer weather station and at least get, wind, temp, baro and even rain fall history, possibly for cheap. Personal broadcast AWOS is definitely not a must have for a small VFR airport obviously, but I could see it as a NICE thing to have.
CELL PHONES
I did not think you could or should use the cell phone in a plane routinely, but I am behind the power curve when it comes to cell phones. I have not tried a cell phone in a plane (flying) lately. I did it once many years ago with out a headset interface. It worked but noise made it impractical. This was before web browsing color cell phones where so wide spread, but its fair to say cell phones are not standard procedure (or is it?).
Today you can call almost any airport with a AWOS/ASOS and listen to the broadcast; I did it all the time for pre-flight planning, but never in the air. I also know you can call a number and type in an airport ID to get the ATIS/AWOS as a text message. I think Dan )_( has or had this option on his web site, you send an email with a key word and his server sent a reply weather email for that station. If you have e-mail on the cell phone you are in business. May be he can tell us how that works. I recall he only had larger airports with K-3 letter ID's. I don't remember the detail. Of course none of the above cell tricks work to get actual approach end runway conditions for a little private airport, if you don't buy a weather station and tie it into the web, which is beyonds my abilities. You see peoples web cams and little weather blocks that are sending the local conditions at a private observing station.
The other cell phone suggestion, as I understand it, was to have your little weather station at your private strip upload weather data to the web, which you could retrieve with a cell phone. I don't know how that works but that sounds interesting.
To use the cell phone you not only need to know the phone number and of course have an in-flight capable phone. Local pilots don't NEED the weather as much because they know the prevailing conditions. Really the VHF broadcast is the most useful, but would be cool to have a phone and web link that you could call or web-browse. I found that was helpful in knowing when the Fog had burned off or visibility increased before driving out to the airport.
For a small low use private airport it is not critical, but sure would be nice to know. Of course we are also talking about VFR airports or operations. IFR really demands an approved weather observer (manual or automated). Commercial operations of course are forbidden to do IFR Ops unless there is WX available. Th idea of setting up a little $300 weather station and hooking it it up to an old COM and antenna for a home grown AWOS is a neat idea. George
