billnaz
Well Known Member
I just made it back from OSH. I did my part for the Wisconsin economy by purchasing a Stratus ADSB receiver for my iPad with Foreflight (had to pay state sales tax, didn't think about that). A couple of observations from someone with no inflight weather radar experience;
1. There is a big hole of no coverage in the middle of the country, which is right where most of the bad weather on my trip home was. I spent the night in Russel KS because of a big line of weather. Seeing it on the iPad wouldn't have changed that I don't think.
2. The detail of the radar received is substantially less than you see while using Foreflight on the ground. While negotiating my last leg through NM and AZ, specifically in the vicinity of Albuquerque, the picture depicted by ADSB looked way worse than the ground based radar image, with large squares of yellow and red in place of much lighter and thinner areas on the ground based presentation. If I had just relied on the ADSB data I might have scrubbed my flight again. The real conditions were closer to the ground based picture, and I encountered just scattered light rain.
My take away is that I've got a lot of learning to do in order to safely interpret what is presented by ADSB in the cabin. Still, another quantum leap in aviation technology!
1. There is a big hole of no coverage in the middle of the country, which is right where most of the bad weather on my trip home was. I spent the night in Russel KS because of a big line of weather. Seeing it on the iPad wouldn't have changed that I don't think.
2. The detail of the radar received is substantially less than you see while using Foreflight on the ground. While negotiating my last leg through NM and AZ, specifically in the vicinity of Albuquerque, the picture depicted by ADSB looked way worse than the ground based radar image, with large squares of yellow and red in place of much lighter and thinner areas on the ground based presentation. If I had just relied on the ADSB data I might have scrubbed my flight again. The real conditions were closer to the ground based picture, and I encountered just scattered light rain.
My take away is that I've got a lot of learning to do in order to safely interpret what is presented by ADSB in the cabin. Still, another quantum leap in aviation technology!