Weather Information?

[wolfipilot]

... anyone an idea of how to get moist early weather information at the airport of arrival?

For example: leaving EDDF (Frankfurt) to LSZH (Zurich) means to most of us not only getting started and landed somehow but having prepared the whole flight accurately. For that I need to know what RWY is supposed to be in use for landing in LSZH as early as possible for descend planning etc.: is it North to South or South to Nord, I mean that is a big difference in descend planning if you are North-Arrival (from EDDF) and have to go around the whole LSZH area for the South Approach or just have to land straight in. Same for the ETA at the final destination which of course than differs immense. To me it is always some kind of coincidence what is given to me by ATC. ATIS is available too late typically. So at the end of the day I don't have any clue how to improve the situation.

How do you guys handle that issue?

BR
WP

[Brett_Henderson]

I use this for real flight planning  (it's pretty good for sim planning too, right down to winds aloft, if you use "real weather"..

http://adds.aviationweather.noaa.gov/

This looks pretty good for international planning.  You have to know how to read METARs and TAFs..

http://euro.wx.propilots.net/

[Brett_Henderson]

Looks like the METARS are similar. Without researching, here's what I got for LSZH..

LSZH 171120Z 08003KT 9999 VCSH FEW032TCU SCT060 BKN100 17/12 Q1020 TEMPO SHRA

17th day of the month, 1120zulu; winds are 080 @ 3kts; showers in the vicinity; few clouds @ 3200agl; scattered clouds @ 6000agl; broken clouds @ 10000agl; temperature is 17C, dewpoint 12C, altimeter is 1020 millbars (30.12 inches)...


Edit: The important missing info is visibility (it should be where the "9999" is).. I'm going to try a few other European airports to see what I get..

[JBaymore]

Also.....

Get the appropriate approach plates for the airport you will be arriving at.

[wolfipilot]

... oh yes, those links are great, I have bookmarked them!

But I understand corretcly that you don't see a chance of getting the internal FS9 data somehow, i.e. which RWY shall be used etc.? I mean: FS9-ATC will "decide" the details of the flight at a certain point of time, and from that on everything should be "readable" in a way, don't you think so?

BR
WP

[JBaymore]

... oh yes, those links are great, I have bookmarked them!

But I understand corretcly that you don't see a chance of getting the internal FS9 data somehow, i.e. which RWY shall be used etc.? I mean: FS9-ATC will "decide" the details of the flight at a certain point of time, and from that on everything should be "readable" in a way, don't you think so?

BR
WP

wolfpilot.

The runway in use in fs2004 is decided by the coding... and is based heavily on the way the wind is blowing and the direction of the available runways.