The first version of Meteo·Mobile’s metar decoder has just been released today.
It’s far from perfect, but has some of the  more important pieces of information always present in a metar report.

While pilots start enjoying this first version, we are already working on the new one, with lots of additional information.

How do you get it? Easy!
Just look for the ‘decode’ link right next to the  Heading of the met report:

And here is what you’ll see once you click on the decode link:

As you can see, so far, the decoded elements are:

• flight conditions (lifr, ifr, mvfr, vfr)
• Wind direction, average intensity and gusts
• Ceiling
• Visibility
• Temperature
• Dew Point
• Relative humidity
• QNH
• Metar raw report

Let me explain:

Clicking on this icon, we will (re)load the metar for the current field.
With this one, we will get the last four metars for the station.

This icon will take us to the Tafor for the current airport.
Clicking on this icon you’ll get both Metars and Tafs.
Click on the little airplane icon to see the airport’s information.
Want to set up a new metar alert for this aiport? Click this one!
This icon will show the flight condition statistics for the field.
This one will (obviously) take you to the post you’re reading.

Enjoy the new navigation experience!

The previous display was really functional (you had links to lots of different weather reports), but it was a bit messy.
Now, in line with last month’s post, we’ve taken the redesign a step further, showing even more information at a glance.

For each of your favourite airports you’ll see:

• Airport’s flight conditions color code
• Wind direction and intensity (in knots, so far)
• Cloud ceiling (in feet)
• Visibility (in meters)
• Temperature (in Celsius)
• Relative humidity (%)
• Sea Level Pressure (QNH)

This is how it looks:

By clicking on any of your favourite airports, you’ll access the Metar for that station. From there, you will have access to that station’s Tafor report, the Airport’s information and many other useful information for us pilots.

Feel free to comment. You can do so in this post or on our new Meteo·Mobile Facebook Page.

It is yet another way for you to interact with us, share your comments, thoughts, likes, dislikes…

What is a QNH Difference Alert?

According to Xavi J. -an experienced glider pilot- when the difference in QNH from two airfields is higher than a particular threshold, they have mountain wave at their local airfield. This could be explained by the fact that winds tend to go from higher pressure areas to lower pressure areas. And in Xavi’s particular case, when the wind blows strongly from the North and there is marked stability, they get the valued mountain wave at La Cerdanya (LECD).
I am not sure whether lots of people will be able to benefit from this kind of alert. But, who knows? You will find out, won’t you? And then, please let me know.

How do I configure the QNH Alert?

Very easy, just navigate to the appropriate Your Preferences menu and input the airport ICAO code for both stations. Then, input the QNH difference threshold (in HPa, please).

When the QNH at the second airport is higher than that of the first airport by the amount you have just cofigured, you’ll get an alert in your email (well, of course you need to Register first, if you hadn’t before)

By the way, La Cerdanya -in the Spanish Pyrenees- is a gorgeous place for mountain soaring (they get thermal, slope and wave soaring).
At the same aerodrome, you can eat at Urvati Sidrería where Eva and Urtus will make you feel at home. And last but not least, you can get your PADI degree for high altitude scuba diving at SCUBA 0.76

If an alert that you configured has been triggered in the last hour, the conditions for that airport will be highligted on your home page. Like this:

So, how do you configure alerts?

There are two ways:

1. From any Metar report, click on the NEW: ALERT Set up for [ICAO] link.
2. From your home page, go to Pilot Tools, and then Your Metar Alerts.

From now on, detecting which airports are under your own personal minimums will be easier than ever!

I really hope you like it!

Now, you can calculate Sunrise/Sunset times for any coordinates, on any date.

But Wait! that’s not all! You can now (if your broser accepts AJAX) type in the name of the airport whose sunrise/sunset times you want to calculate, and voilà ! the airport’s coordinates will be populated for you.

We’re making it too easy… XD

But thanks to Alex Griffioen, and his post How to make sexy buttons with CSS, we’ve given your favourite aviation weather website a new look.

Look at this nice buttons!:

We’ve recently been working at improving the site’s design a bit. I hope you will also have noticed we’ve improved the site’s speed a lot! (like ten-fold or so)

Well, make an exception and drop us a comment, will ya? (it’s nice to know that you guys like it)

For all those pilots whose browser supports geolocation, you can now discover which are the nearby airports.
From Meteo·Mobile’s home page, just click on the link airports nearby your location.

On the new page, you’ll get a list with the airports that are closest to your location.

Don’t forget to comment how you like it!

Right at Meteo·Mobile’s home page, you’ll get the wind direction, wind intensity and ceiling (if any).
These will be shown in gray right below each airfiled’s links to airport information, metar, metar+taf, last four metars and taf.

Remember that the fields shown at your home page are:

1. Your top 5 visited airports
2. PLUS those airports you ‘force’ at Your Preferences page (this is quite useful while on the go),
3. MINUS those you decide to ‘omit’ (also at Your Preferences page, useful when you’ve lost interest in an airfield)

We hope you like it.