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.

In a short while, TFM 22.5 will release. This version has three major updates. The new features include a fix to the settings dialog, a setting to find the location of the airports database, and a new ILS system.

Settings update

In the past, the PMDG CDU soft keys setting in the PMDG settings refused to save. Going forward, all settings will keep the user’s preferences. We also added some new settings described in the following sections.

Airports database location

There is a new category in settings named airports database. When exploring these settings, there is a text field that accepts a folder path where P3D’s airports database is found. You will also find a browse button to aid in finding the required folder. This setting is needed in order for TFM to make use of airport functions. The new ILS system is one of those features requiring the use of the airports database.

New ILS system

The current ILS system is based on the aircraft’s navigation system. For example, NAV1 has a localizer needle that moves from left to right showing your position on the localizer. The same method occurs for the glide slope. When NAV1 is tracking the glide slope, the radio needle moves up and down to show your position on the glide slope. TFM represents these positions as a percentage value. For example, “99% left, 80% up”. It is difficult to understand the meaning of these values, so we rewrote the current ILS system to supply heading values for the localizer, and altitude values for the glide slope. For example, TFM might announce “40 left, 1500 below”. In this case, turn 40 degrees to the left for the localizer, and descend 1500 feet for the glide slope. Along with the new ILS system are two settings under aircraft in the settings dialog. The first one is ‘announce localizer headings’. When it is checked, the localizer will supply directions in the form of headings. The second one is ‘announce glide slope altitudes’. When checked, the glide slope will supply directions in the form of altitude values. When these settings are unchecked, the ILS system will revert to the original percentage values.

The new ILS system comes with a dialog opened by pressing the right bracket key (]), then pressing CONTROL+D. You must make selections in this dialog for the new ILS to work. When the dialog opens, focus is placed on the airport field. You can then type the airport code of interest, such as KMIA or KATL. When done, press ENTER on your keyboard. TFM should announce the number of runways loaded. Otherwise, it will announce that the airport is invalid. When you have the runways of interest loaded, press ALT+R to jump to the list of runways. Use the arrow keys to choose a runway. When done, press ALT+I to jump to the ILS information field. Review the details. If needed, revisit the runways list to make another choice, then revisit the ILS information field to review the details again. To revisit the airport field, press ALT+A, then type in a new airport code and press ENTER on your keyboard. When satisfied with your choices, press ALT+O for the Ok button. Otherwise press ALT+C to cancel and close the dialog. Feel free to make use of the destination runway dialog any time during a flight. As long as the settings are set before final approach.

Known issues

The destination runway dialog has no method of clearing current settings. To fix, load another airport.
The ILS details field in the destination runway dialog only gives essential information. Report a new feature to have more information added.
The distance lines in the ILS details of the destination runway dialog may give false numbers when on ground or before aircraft power up. This is a limitation of the database.

We want your feedback on any TFM features. To report a bug or new feature request, press the right bracket key (]), then press CONTROL+SHIFT+I to open the GitHub issue queue. Please look to see if your feature or bug has already been reported. If not, feel free to post a new report. Otherwise, make a new comment on an existing report discussing your bug or feature. To contact us about getting started with TFM, feel free to fill out our contact form. One of us will get back with you soon.