Objectives
Gain the skills associated with obtaining, understanding, and applying weather information for a flight under IFR.
Reading
This is the required reading for this lesson. Numbers in [brackets] indicate the starting and ending page in the referenced reading material. Read all the pages and sections referenced.
Summary
The notes below highlight the important parts in the referenced material. Reading the notes without having read the actual referenced material is generally not sufficient to pass the written exam!
PHAK - Chapter 12
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Understand how weather patterns form and how they affect flight
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Being able to describe the effect of wind
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Crosswind
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Tailwind
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Windshear
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Identify various clouds and the associated precipitation
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Describe various weather phenomena and their formation
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Based on weather identify hazardous conditions en-route
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Make a go/no-go decision
PHAK - Chapter 13
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Able to obtain weather information from on-line sources
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Interpret
IFH - Chapter 4
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Pressure Altitude
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Density Altitude
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Pressure altitude corrected for nonstandard temperature
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Icing
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Structural Icing
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Induction icing
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Clear Ice
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Rime Ice
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Mixed Ice
Sim Pilot Notes
These notes highlight the differences between simulator and real-world flying. These differences are most often due to simulator limitations or specific VATSIM rules.
PHAK - Chapter 12
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A sim pilot can set his/her own weather in the sim regardless of the actual current weather conditions
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There are several built-in as well as add-on weather applications for the sims
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Active Sky
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FSrealWX
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FSXWX
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...
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There often is a delay between real weather updates and the VATSIM weather information available to ATC and the pilot client. Many add-on weather application have a function to sync with VATSIM instead of real-world sources
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Although the P2-IR checkride will be conducted in simulated daytime IFR conditions, all flight planning and go/no-go decisions need to be based on current weather
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The student needs to know how to simulate various weather scenarios either through the sim's weather functions or using external add-on applications
PHAK - Chapter 13
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In addition to obtaining the real-world weather information, in the sim
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Retrieve VATSIM weather if different than real-world weather
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Confirm that the retrieved weather corresponds to the conditions displayed in the sim
IFH - Chapter 4
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Advanced aircraft models simulate ice accumulation under certain weather conditions
Tomas Hansson (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
Chief Flight Instructor, VATSTAR
DISCLAIMER: all information contained herein is for flight simulation purposes only.
March 2021