It's pretty grotty weather in south London tonight so I thought I would have a quick flight from Southend to Biggin in my trusty Cessna and practice coping with rain and crosswinds. After taking off I turned right a few degrees then my wife distracted me for a short while so I put the flight on pause.When I resumed I found myself struggling to make headway. A quick check in the ASV panel showed why. The METAR shows the wind as 230175G27KT. This is being translated as wind from 230 degrees at 175 kts which explains why I am going backwards and sideways!! Is this a typo in the metar or is the wind meant to be 17.5 kts gusting to 27 kts?Paul Croft15 miles north of EGKK

Hi Paul,Looks like you can chalk that one up on the reporting station. There is no way that ASV would know that 175 should be 17.5!The latest METAR from there was correct in the format.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Sales and Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_dev_team.jpg http://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_proud_supporter.jpg

Has to be a typo. You never get fractional windspeeds in METARs or TAFs e.g. 17.5 is not valid, so 175 could not be 17.5 either.

Thanks for the replies. I thought at the time that a 'fractional' windspeed was dubious.Paul Croft15 miles north of EGKK

I know from work when sending metars to the Met Office (we are only 20 miles down the road from EGMC), the format will not allow us to make mistakes like putting in anything above 99kts.I don't know what could have happened here.Still, good practice at landing backwards!

Nice to hear from the horse's mouth, as t'were Neil :-) Thanks for the heads up.Paul Croft15 miles north of EGKK