Introducing weather center
Talking flight monitor would like to introduce its new state of the art feature called weather center. Weather center allows pilots to check the weather at their aircraft’s current location. It will track temperatures, wind, and clouds. It also features a customizable wind command, allowing pilots the ability to choose which wind conditions to include in the wind command’s output. Other customizable features will come in future preview releases as time permits. Each of the sections of weather center are covered below.
Wind layers
Wind layers are those atmospheric layers that have different wind conditions. Pilots can explore each layer of wind conditions in the weather center by pressing right bracket, CONTROL+W to start weather center, then navigating to the wind section. When pressing TAB, each pilot will be presented with a list containing the wind layers. Using up and down arrows will navigate between the layers. Each layer has seven different elements that represent the wind conditions. They include upper altitude, direction, speed, gusts, turbulence, visibility, and wind shear.
Temperature layers
Temperature layers are those atmospheric levels representing the temperature at a given altitude range. Pilots can open the weather center and navigate to temperatures to explore each atmospheric layer of temperature. When focused on the list of layers, using up and down arrows will navigate between each temperature layer. Each layer has different elements associated with it. These elements include base altitude (lower altitude of the layer, day temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius, and the nighttime variant.
Cloud layers
Pilots can explore cloud conditions after opening weather center by navigating to the clouds section. When focused on the cloud layers list, pilots can explore each cloud layer by using the up and down arrows. As with the other layer types, the cloud layers give different elements to the weather conditions at each cloud layer. Some of these include cloud type, icing conditions, turbulence lower and upper altitude, cloud coverage, and more. Altitudes. In future releases, pilots will be able to press a keyboard command to check the cloud conditions at their current location.
Wind command settings
Previously, pilots could press right bracket, I to get a wind report at their current position. It included a fixed set of elements. From now on, pilots can choose what elements are included in the output from the wind command. To do this, navigate toTFM’s settings area, then find the weather section in the tree. Expand the weather category and then navigate to wind command (output). When navigating through this window, check the boxes for the elements you want included in the wind command, and uncheck the ones you want excluded from the wind command. These settings will persist across TFM restarts.
Refresh rate
The weather center also features an automatic refresh rate. To set this, navigate to TFM settings area, find the weather category and expand it. Navigate to auto refresh and set the refresh rate in number of minutes. For example, setting the refresh rate to 10 will set the refresh rate to 10 minutes.
Automatic announcements
The weather center will also feature automatic announcements of different weather conditions such as entering and exiting clouds, different icing conditions, turbulence changes, shear changes, and others as time permits. To turn these on or off, navigate to TFM settings area, expand the weather category and navigate to automatic announcements. Navigating this area will allow pilots to turn these on or off. Check the boxes for the elements you want TFM to automatically announce, and uncheck those boxes for the elements TFM should not automatically announce.
Future updates
Future updates will continue after the first release of the weather center. Some of them include the ability to provide an airport ICAO code to check weather conditions at an airport, or even a GPS coordinate pair to check conditions elsewhere. Other updates and features will depend on community feedback. If you wish to contact us, do so at www.talkingflightmonitor.com, or by sending an email to info@talkingflightmonitor.com.
