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Posts Tagged ‘stories’

I was on my way home tonight and had an interesting experience that I thought I would share.

I fly often between Springfield, Ohio and Chicago, Illinois.  This is a pretty regular trip and I am familiar with how much fuel I can depart with out of Springfield, make the round trip to Chicago and still have plenty of fuel by the time I return. In fact, I can tell you that if I top off in Springfield before I leave, I’ll land with about 1000-1200 lbs of fuel when I land (depending on routing and the wind).

Well, I was about half way home on the last leg of this familiar round trip, when I looked up and noticed that something wasn’t making sense. Instead of the 1000 pounds I normally land with, the on-board FMS was calculating I would only have 600 lbs. It was also calculating nearly an hour of flight time left, when it should have been closer to 30 minutes. A little more investigating revealed that it was calculating the flight distance at 433 NM when the flight is only about 260 miles. Something wasn’t making sense.

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Funny story for you with humor that only a pilot may understand. I was checking the ASOS at my home airport on the way in tonight and I heard something interesting on the radio:

Automated weather, time 2156 zulu, winds 290 at 9, visibility 10, sky clear, light rain, temperature 22, dewpoint 16, altimeter 30.22

Sky Clear and Rain? I’m confused. I’m not sure where the rain came from? I sure didn’t see any. Now here is the really funny coincidence, as I was listening to the radio on the way home, Creedence Clearwater Revival came on singing, “Have you ever seen the rain?” Now if you aren’t familiar with the lyrics, let me quote the chorus for you:

I want to know, have you ever seen the rain?
I want to know, have you ever seen the rain?
Comin down on a sunny day?

No, CCR, I haven’t seen the rain come down on a sunny day, but it sure wasn’t for the lack of trying.

Now, to turn this into an educational experience, I’m going to add a quick lesson. How do you seriously know when an ASOS might be reporting inaccurate or corrupted data? You can look for a “$” sign at the end of the METAR report. Here’s an example:

260256Z AUTO 19007KT 8SM FEW080 22/19 A3002 RMK AO2 56010 T02220194 LTG DSNT NW-NE SLP158 $

You know from the $ sign at the end of the report that maintenance is needed on the weather station system making this report. That is the station’s way of saying, “I’m in need of some attention.” You don’t know what is broke but you know that something may be inaccurate. I would recommend trying to find another surface observation in the area and compare it to the other to make sure they are reporting somewhat similar weather.

Fly Safe.