Please Help?When On the FMC perf/init page, where can I find the information for cruise/wind. I have tried smart cockpit for this info but canot find the correct charts..Many thanks.Natalie french

Please Help?When On the FMC perf/init page, where can I find the information for cruise/wind. I have tried smart cockpit for this info but canot find the correct charts..Many thanks.Natalie french

Natalie,I don't know how the hardcore simmers do it, but airlines usually give you this info as part of your flight plan. You could also get this info from "winds aloft" forecasts. Have fun.

I use the average cruise winds that I get from ActiveSky. Another way to do it is to go onto an aviation weather website and calculate your average winds for a given altitude. On the real aircraft, their ACARS uplink automatically update the winds for each leg that the aircraft flies.Hope that helpsMatt LaMay

Please Help?When On the FMC perf/init page, where can I find the information for cruise/wind. I have tried smart cockpit for this info but canot find the correct charts..Many thanks.Natalie french

I use the NOAA's Weather Charts. There's a bug with the links so to get the right one you need to do the following:

• Find the chart for your area, and your planned cruise altitude. (ie. If I'm flying from Prestwick to Stansted at FL350, I would search for "EUROPE" and then look for the European chart with information at the altitude closest to my cruise altitude -- in this case FL340).
• Right click and choose "Copy Shortcut" ("Copy Link Location" for Firefox)
• Open a new tab or window.
• Delete whatever's in the address bar, then right click and paste.
• Change the bit that says "/fax/" to "/pub/fax", (ie. "http://weather.noaa.gov/fax/PJAA99.TIF" becomes "http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/fax/PJAA99.TIF")
• Click Open or Save, whatever you normally do.

Now, to read these charts you will need a TIFF viewer, Adobe Photoshop can open them. If you don't have Photoshop, get This one. One final thing. You must be able to read wind barbs. If you are unsure, The barb points in the direction the wind is COMING FROM. Each long notch is 10kts, a short one is 5kts and a flag is 50kts. You total these up to find the wind speed.

This is the website I use:http://www.jeppesen.com/aviation/personal/...ion-weather.jspAlso, the Active Sky forecasts on the Nav Log are very accurate which you can print before your flight.

This is the website I use:http://www.jeppesen.com/aviation/personal/...ion-weather.jspAlso, the Active Sky forecasts on the Nav Log are very accurate which you can print before your flight.

Onurksn, is there anywhere on jeppesens site that would give you the meaning of the symbols on the weather charts ? Unfortunantely, I'm not up on weather chart reading :( Had a browse on thier site but could'nt find any info.Thanks

Onurksn, is there anywhere on jeppesens site that would give you the meaning of the symbols on the weather charts ? Unfortunantely, I'm not up on weather chart reading :( Had a browse on thier site but could'nt find any info.Thanks

As I explained in my above post:

The barb points in the direction the wind is COMING FROM. Each long notch is 10kts, a short one is 5kts and a flag is 50kts. You total these up to find the wind speed.

Also, the number next to it is the temperature, and if it's a low level chart, it might contain information about cloud cover. This will be inside the circle:

Onurksn, is there anywhere on jeppesens site that would give you the meaning of the symbols on the weather charts ? Unfortunantely, I'm not up on weather chart reading :( Had a browse on thier site but could'nt find any info.Thanks

Hi Terry,Andrew explains it pretty well in his post but the link below may be of further help to you.http://www.jeppesen.com/download/weather/wx_wind.pdf

Hi Andrew and Onur.Many thanks for your replies. It makes very interesting reading for a novice. At least now, I will have a better understanding of winds at different altitudes which will help with route planning. Where as before, there were no wind speed or direction factored into my flight plan.Thank you

Many thanks for all your replys,this has been very helpful.Natalie French