I've been used to the Flightwatch radio on 122.0 giving the conditions at my aircraft. The wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, and maybe even the temperature were always what I was experiencing at altitude at my location. Well, I don't fly that high, so I can't confirm the temperature.

 

Imagine my surprise on my first SP2 flight when Flightwatch reported the conditions on the ground at the station! Wait, what?? That's not the setting on the barometer when I press the B key. And the winds are all wrong, both speed and direction. Even the temperature is off.

 

Well, guess what? This is what I should have been expecting all along. An even bigger surprise was that the wind direction was so far off... 20 degrees! Since that was the magnetic variation where I was flying in Alaska at the time, it looks like winds are given in degrees true rather than magnetic. So many new things to learn.

 

At least flight following still gives me the correct altimeter setting for my location. Has the barometer smoothing algorithm been changed? I didn't notice the usual jumping (by 00.01) this time, but the altimeter wasn't in my normal field of view during the flight.

 

This was with DWC, local station writes, and prevent cloud redraws.

 

Damian, you're messin' with my head! In a good way.

 

Larry Hookins

Update:

 

I've been testing Standard and Smooth Cloud Transition modes. The wind seems to be from the correct direction with Smooth when I tune 122.00 before I leave the ground. The wind was also correct at my destination. Winds can be anything during the flight. More testing with Standard is indicated.

 

I'm not sure where the wind direction offsets are coming from, but I've seen some pretty odd behavior from the FlightWatch radio and even from the ATC when it gives the barometric pressure to other pilots. While the baro is usually a bit off, which is reasonable, sometimes it's really off. Often I've heard something like 29.44 when the B key gives 29.14, but that's the most severe. It's usually more like 29.34 or 29.24. Yes, the last digit is usually what I'd expect.

 

I don't know if this is typical behavior with non-DWC settings, if it's a bug in AS2012 SP2, or even if my computer is messing up a memory location, either from hardware instability or from FSX overwriting memory it shouldn't.

 

If I had something I could put my finger on, I'd open a trouble ticket. But this is really too bizarre. Anyone else using FlightWatch radio and noticing anomalies like this?

 

Larry Hookins