Winds aloft - North Atlantic, Europe etc.

[rdb 44]

Hello Simmers,Crusing at my first transatlantic flight right now, i have a few important questions about winds aloft. Seeked thru some topics on this forum already, but i haven't found an answer (or i haven't searched properly).At first, wxRE manual states: "Online International Winds Aloft Processing". What does it mean? Are there any sources of winds aloft information available over Internet, which have winds for regions outside US? I need to know where wxRE gets winds for Europe, North Atlantic and so... The problem is that wxRE manual tells me to look at aviationweather.gov (for winds flight planning), but they have only winds for US.I'm stuck over Atlantic with 60 kts headwind[1], GS being only 410 kts, i'm double-checking my calculations and seems like i'll be at CYYZ with only 200 kilos of fuel. That is not good, i'll need to make unplanned landing at some airport to refuel (took off at MTOW). I'm confused. Before this first flight, i've read a lot of materials about north-atlantic flights, and they all stated that westbound flights (from Europe to North America) takes place at day, and eastbound (in the other direction) takes place at night, _due to winds_. I'm flying at day. Ok, i'm getting more confused. I open wxRE options, check "Update aloft on new station" and un-check "Low-Bandwidth Winds Download". I press "save" and "refresh". WOW! Now i have 50kts tailwind! Great. But hey, wait, how's that?Conclusion: i love realism. Before every flight (especialy long ones) i want to check SOMEWHERE winds forecasts and experience them in flight. They also should be the REAL ones. Is it possible? P.S. English is not my native language, sorry.Thanks in advance,Radek Bochenek[1]. they were not shown as "simulated" by wxRE.

[Damian Clark 1,203]

Hi Radek,The reason the winds switched was probably because the winds region you used does not update winds information as often, and when using Low-Bandwidth option it only downloads from the most recent time slot - if there is no data it will simulate it and it can sometimes be inaccurate from true winds. This low-bandwidth winds is not recommended unless you are having trouble downloading winds by default. When you changed your option and refreshed it downloaded the winds from the previous time slot in addition to "current" and now has actual data (even though it is a few hours old).The source of winds data is the WMO resounding report database, which is provided by NOAA. University of Wyoming has a great point and click access page at http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.htmlThe best place to check the winds internationally is via winds charts from your local aviation service. NOAA (www.aviationweather.gov) does have this information in the "International Flight Folder".Hope that helps!-Damian[table border=0" cellspacing="30" cellpadding="0][tr][td align = "left"]Damian ClarkHiFi Simulation SoftwareDeveloper of ActiveSkyThe next-generation weather environment simulation for FS2002!http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky[/td][td]http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg][/td][/tr][/table://http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/ima...[/tr][/table

[rdb 44]

>The reason the winds switched was probably because the winds>region you used does not update winds information as often,>and when using Low-Bandwidth option it only downloads from the>most recent time slot - if there is no data it will simulate>it and it can sometimes be inaccurate from true winds. Hi Damian,Thanks for the explanation, especially about WMO. Here comes another problem, which i noticed later in-flight. Since there are no WMO stations over atlantic, when flying from UK to Canada for example, we'll have something like this:WMO station on UK side - simulated winds - WMO station on Canadian sideProblematic here are simulated winds. I had about 50kts tailwind when i was in range of UK WMO, but after switching to simulated winds (more than 500nm from UK station), winds became 60kts headwind. That's because they were simulated based on BGBW (AFAIR) METAR report, which was acutally far from me. Any solution for this?Maybe adding option to specify "WMO range"? We can then set it to 1000nm for example, and have WMO winds all over Atlantic, rather than ridiculous simulated winds based on some greenland's METAR.Am i right?>The source of winds data is the WMO resounding report>database, which is provided by NOAA. University of Wyoming>has a great point and click access page at>http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.htmlAwesome! Put some words about it in manual, if you can.The only information about winds aloft outside US a user can get, is ... "Online International Winds Aloft Processing" in Feature summary.I guess wxRE have some built-in index of WMO stations and its coordinates around the world, and selects nearest WMO station by calculating distance to stations from current aircraft position (coordinates) ?Ok, take a look at UoW website, select Europe, put yourself in sim at EPRZ airport (but select gate, NOT runway when placing yourself there - FS comes with broken AFCAD for this airport). This airport is located in southeast Poland and assuming to WMO stations on Europe map, the reporting station for EPRZ should be 11952 or 33631. For some reason the reporting station is 33393 (don't know where it is). For other airports i checked, the UoW Europe map and wxRE actual reporting station was correct (for example EPWA gets 12374 as it should, after looking at map).>Hope that helps!Thanks, wxRE is definitly worth its price!

[Damian Clark 1,203]

Hi there,Thanks for your input! I have changed the 500nm ring to 1000nm for the 1.9 release - hopefully this will help alot for trans-oceanic flights...The WMO station info is in wmo.txt, and yes, each station and its coordinates are listed here. You can make modifications here, and this is recommended as sites come up and go down all the time in certain countries. The 33393 station may be old and now replaced with 11952. I would delete out 33393 and replace with 11952 (use the lat/lon coords given on the WMO page) and see if you get better results.. let me know!-Damian[table border=0" cellspacing="30" cellpadding="0][tr][td align = "left"]Damian ClarkHiFi Simulation SoftwareDeveloper of ActiveSkyThe next-generation weather environment simulation for FS2002!http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky[/td][td]http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg][/td][/tr][/table://http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/ima...[/tr][/table