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.
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.
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