I fly a C172 in r/l and when filing an instrument flight plan, I need to be reasonably accurate with my ETA's at the various fixes.waypoints that comprise the flight plan. To get this accuracy I access winds aloft data, and extract the wind data for the altitude closest to cruise, and use a flight computer to calculate ground speed (which yields time when divided by distance between the waypoints). When we get a flight model as good as the recently released C182T bird, where I can quite accurately get TAS from given power settings, I am now wondering how I would get winds aloft data from ASE- I usually use historical weather as I am loading usually IFR weather at my destination airport that I have noted previously from the aviation METARs, and later loaded into FSX through ASE (the departure and arrival weather that ASE sets is very good and close within FSX limits to the METAR that I am trying to replicate). There are winds aloft but I can never figure out where they are generated from. After the real time they are no longer available in the real Winds Aloft forecast online (obviously). I don't even know if they are available from ASE (the ones used in creating winds aloft, whether real or otherwise), if they are then it's irrelevant as to whether they are real or not I guess as I still can use them to input to the flight computer and get a good ground speed solution. How do others use a "forecast winds aloft" for flight planning in FSX when using ASE? Especially when accessing historical data? I know that some simulator use an algorithm to synthesize winds aloft from ground weather (METARs), I'm not sure if ASE is doing that or not. Thanks, Bruce.

Hi, Process your plan in ASE and ASE will give you the winds aloft at your waypoints. They are gathered from the data either saved in your case or live if you are using real time data.

Thanks Jim. Bruce.