How to separate airports in ServInfo checking METARs

[WebMaximus 372]

Wasn't sure in what forum I should post this question about ServInfo since it doesn't really have anything to do with FSX so please feel free to move my post to a more appropriate forum whichever that might be.

 

Now to my question. I just remembered there's a feature in ServInfo where you can check the weather for different airports and this works pretty well but when I try to add only the airports I'm interested in using their ICAO codes and separating them using a slash as per the instructions in ServInfo the METAR and TAF Reports window in ServInfo stops responding and then my only option is to force a close of ServInfo and then start it again.

 

When I get this problem I've been using a syntax like

 

ESSA/EFHK/ENGM/EKCH for example

 

If I on the other hand only use the first 3 characters in the ICAO code and then add a star as the 4'th character like this

 

ESS*EFH*ENG*EKC*

 

it works just fine but instead I get many airports I'm not interested in in the list.

 

Does anyone know of a syntax that will work in ServInfo to see the METAR for only the airports you choose yourself or maybe there's some other freeware tool that can do this or even some online service?

 

Reason I want to do this is I have a set number of specific airports I do all my flying to and often I like to fly to an airport where the landing will be a bit of a challenge so for that reason I would like to find an easy way to check at what of my airports the weather conditions are not that good.

 

Thanks in advance for any input !!

[srburger 0]

Slashes work for me. ServInfo connected to the VATSIM server on Windows XP, via Parallels on a MacBook Pro.

 

If the airports you're interested in are all in the same part of the world, SkyVector will give you a really quick at-a-glance overview of the weather using different colored dots at the weather stations. Green is VFR, Blue is MVFR, Red is IFR, and Purple is LIFR. You can hover your cursor over the dot to see the METAR.

[WebMaximus 372]

Strange why vectors work for you but not for me, maybe something in my ServInfo folder got corrupt...hmm...might try to re-download it.

 

Thanks for the tip using SkyVector!

[srburger 0]

ServInfo is a fairly old program. If you're running Windows 7 or 8, you might also want to try running ServInfo in Windows XP Compatibility Mode. Just a wild guess, but worth a try.

[WebMaximus 372]

Same problem after downloading a fresh copy of SI but then I discovered what the problem was/is, all is working fine as long as you have VATSIM as your chosen weather provider but if you choose NOAA (which I would like to use) then you get the problem I described.

 

However using VATSIM is probably OK because hopefully it will be very close to NOAA. Does anyone know where VATSIM gets it's wx data from?

ServInfo is a fairly old program. If you're running Windows 7 or 8, you might also want to try running ServInfo in Windows XP Compatibility Mode. Just a wild guess, but worth a try.

 

That's a good idea which I had not thought of but just tried it and still same problem when using NOAA as the source so it appears to be something special with the NOAA data compared to the VATSIM data.

[srburger 0]

I've not experienced inconsistencies between VATSIM weather and NOAA. The times that I've checked, the METARS were identical; but I did a quick search to confirm. It appears that VATSIM uses NOAA but the results are delayed by a few minutes. That shouldn't cause you a problem.

[WebMaximus 372]

Yeah, using vatsim as source will work out just fine considering I'll only use this to find challenging weather and great to hear NOAA is still used in the backend!