Meteo·Mobile Blog

The Blog for Mobile Aviation Weather for smartphones

Tag Archives: map

Google maps from blackberry

I’ve recently updated the software in my blackberry and found out that they’ve implemented an improvement long wished for.

Now, when you click on a kml link, google maps for mobile opens showing the information contained in that kml file.

What this means to Meteo·Mobile users is that they no longer need to copy the kml link, open google maps, paste the link and wait.
Now, just clicking on the kml link will take care of all of that, automatically opening the google maps application.

Thus, I’ve updated the link and called it ‘mobile map’ instead of ‘kml’

I have not had the chance to check if this behavior is analogous in iPhone or other sort of handhelds, so feedback will be appreciated.

The places you get to go being a pilot

The best things in Aviation are:

  • Flying
  • The People you get to know
  • The Places you get to go

At Meteo·Mobile we want to do something so that you, the more experienced aviators can share your knowledge on ” The places you get to go being a pilot ”

Often all we pilots need to get on a plane and get going is an excuse, a place to go. This is precisely our purpose, to give pilots lots of excuses to go flying!

So please go ahead and make happy pilots by sending us cool places:

  • Restaurants, Bars, Grills, BBQs to go eat
  • Nice Scenery to go see from the air
  • Nice airports, airstrips, grass-strips to go land and meet its people

You can do so, by using our Add-a-Cool-Aviation-Place form (very easy to use Googlemaps), by posting a comment to this post or even sending us an e-mail. We’ll do the rest.

Metar

When you ask for a Metar, this is what you get:

metar

Above we can see the Metar itself with a couple of things that help better check that we’ve gotten what we were asking for. Name it the Date and age of the weather report. Also , if the weather report is ‘old’ we will get a red warning stating so.

Next, we get a series of links to get other Wx reports. You can get the Metar, the last 4 Metars, the Taf, All of the previous, or you can also ask for the Navigation info only.

Next, we’ll get the station’s information tha you can see here:

  • Station name and country
  • Current UTC time
  • ICAO and IATA designator for the airport
  • Links too the map and kml of the airport
  • GPS coordinates
  • Sunrise and Sunset times


Next, we’ll get the ‘Extra information‘. This a spaced reserved for pilot input; that’s where we hope that in the future you’ll find the other pilot’s advice on what to do when you go there. Anyone can use the Share your POI’s link to send us information (POI stands for Point Of Interest).
You can use that to send us:

  • Your club’s web site
  • Your favorite local FBO
  • Your local webcam

Here we have a link to all of the weather charts that include this particular airport and the Geographic information:

  • A Google map
  • A list of the nearby alternates (5 unless you specify differently in your settings)
    For each alternate you get it’s ICAO designator, the distance and true course FROM this airport.
    Also the type of alternates that you get depend on your settings. There, you can choose whether you want to see any airport or only those with weather information.

Now look at the alternate’s names.
You’ll see some are in lower case, those don’t have METAR reports. The ones in UPPER CASE do have METAR reports. And the ones underlined have extra information (supplied by other pilots).

And finally you get a form to ask for another Metar for another aiport.