Choice of one of the closest station

[mlaviole6255 0]

A good addon but I have a problem when I use an airport with limited met data. At CYCL, for instance, the met report for CYCL in the upper window, Closest Station, does not include pressure altitude, most times, and often does not include cloud conditions. The only data is wind. What you see then at CYCL is a blue sky with normal pressure (29.92). This is annoying when flying to another airport as this CYCL condition will prevail until the program identifies another met station with complete information. It appears that it is not possible to manually select one of the next closest station with complete met(in the upper window, Closest Station) althought it is there in the background. It may be possible to get around this by using the Custom Station Report and Fetch the proper met for the other closest met stations assuming their IDs are known. In summary, if I fly from CYCL to say CYQM at this very moment,under a low pressure system, the sky is completely covered(8/8) all the way, means that the visibly at CYCL for takeoff is a clear sky since the met report only has wind data, it would become completely covered as soon as ActiveSky would pick up a next station with the appropriate data. It appears that at least three basic sets of information are required in the Closest Station Report identified to produce a realistic met picture, that is wind, cloud conditions and pressure altitude. So, can anyone clarify this for me? How can I can get a realistic met condition at an aiport like CYCL which appears as the Closest Station Report in the upper window of ActiveSky (Ver 2004.5)?Maurice

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,The problem with smaller stations is that the data is limited and reports are not once an hour. But be aware that AS will also use the surrounding weather conditions once you leave the 2 mile radius of a station. So it is possible for AS to be reporting one thing and you seeing something a little different in FS. The short term solution would be to remove CYCL as a weather station. Would you want me to expalin how to do that?Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004proudsupporter.jpg

[mlaviole6255 0]

Hello,Yes, removing CYCL would be a solution as there are two other stations nearby. How? Thankyou for the prompt reply.Maurice

[JSkorna 137]

In your AS2004 folder there is a file called wx station list. Back up this file in case you do not like the results. Open with Notepad and find the CYCL line and delete the entire line. Save and exit. Fire up FS and AS and see what shows up at CYCL.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004proudsupporter.jpg

[brucewtb 249]

A follow up question on this issue. My local airport YMER is not in the AS2004 databse and AS2004 insists on using the weather at Cooma (YSCM) an inland town some distance from where live on the coast of New South Wales Australia. Cooma weather is continental, very cold in winter and hot and dry in summer and quite different from the mild coastal where I live. It would be more accurate if I could use the weather from Nowra (YSNW) some distance to the north but on the coast. Can you overide what station you get weather from to achieve this outcome?Bruce

[mlaviole6255 0]

Hello,Yes, after experimenting with CYCL, I agree with you that this would be an improvement to AS if it was possible to use the Fetch to access the met from a known station nearby, other than the one in the upper window, Closest Station Report, and be able to move this one in the upper window. This selected station would then load the met in FS. In this case for CYCL, I had remove it as proposed above from the wx list and it picked up the next closest station at 69nm away but it did not load this one. So, I reinstalled CYCL in the list but the problem with this met station is that it does not provide pressure altitude, and quite often no cloud conditions, so the wind is the only parameter left. This is not realistic. I live near the end of the runway at CYCL. This am the ceiling is about 500 ft and it is snowing. The met report provides wind only. In AS, CYCL is in the top window, CS Report, but FS shows a clear bue sky...not quite realistic, right. This is the reason why, like you Bruce, I would like to be able to replace the CYCL report in the top window with another met report(next best closest station) and even be able to insert a pressure altitude as their are other data bases that provide this info. For comments and consideration.Cheers,Maurice

[Damian Clark 1,203]

Hi Bruce, all,I can add something like this on the server side to support translation of station fetch information. I.e. Add entry for YMER in wx_station_list.txt (on the user side) and on server side I will populate YMER data by fetching station data from YSNW.Please do me a favor and send me an e-mail with any/all airports you would like to have handled like this, with the airport data (ID, LAT, LON, ELEV, MAGVAR) and which station you would like the data fetched from (must be valid reporting station). Send to damianc@hifisim.com. I'll make the changes on the server and to the distribution wx_station_list file (which will be posted on our website). Thanks!!!

[brucewtb 249]

Thanks Damian I will get back to you on this by email. I will need to have a closer look at other airports, but as general rule it would be better if coastal airports got weather from coastal airpots and vice versa for inland airports. For example my area is subject to srong NE sea breezes but a Metar from Cooma (YSCM) wouldn't have this as sea breezes only extend a short way inland - except very late in the day in summer. But Nowra (YSNW), some distance up the coast from Merimbula (YMER), is quite likely to have the same sea breeze. This is mainly an issue for parts of the world with relatively few reporting stations such as Australia.Bruce