The first version of Meteo·Mobile’s metar decoder has just been released today.
It’s far from perfect, but has some of the  more important pieces of information always present in a metar report.

While pilots start enjoying this first version, we are already working on the new one, with lots of additional information.

How do you get it? Easy!
Just look for the ‘decode’ link right next to the  Heading of the met report:

And here is what you’ll see once you click on the decode link:

As you can see, so far, the decoded elements are:

• flight conditions (lifr, ifr, mvfr, vfr)
• Wind direction, average intensity and gusts
• Ceiling
• Visibility
• Temperature
• Dew Point
• Relative humidity
• QNH
• Metar raw report

Let me explain:

Clicking on this icon, we will (re)load the metar for the current field.
With this one, we will get the last four metars for the station.

This icon will take us to the Tafor for the current airport.
Clicking on this icon you’ll get both Metars and Tafs.
Click on the little airplane icon to see the airport’s information.
Want to set up a new metar alert for this aiport? Click this one!
This icon will show the flight condition statistics for the field.
This one will (obviously) take you to the post you’re reading.

Enjoy the new navigation experience!

The previous display was really functional (you had links to lots of different weather reports), but it was a bit messy.
Now, in line with last month’s post, we’ve taken the redesign a step further, showing even more information at a glance.

For each of your favourite airports you’ll see:

• Airport’s flight conditions color code
• Wind direction and intensity (in knots, so far)
• Cloud ceiling (in feet)
• Visibility (in meters)
• Temperature (in Celsius)
• Relative humidity (%)
• Sea Level Pressure (QNH)

This is how it looks:

By clicking on any of your favourite airports, you’ll access the Metar for that station. From there, you will have access to that station’s Tafor report, the Airport’s information and many other useful information for us pilots.

Feel free to comment. You can do so in this post or on our new Meteo·Mobile Facebook Page.

Starting today, we are conducting a test for an undetermined amount of time: Meteo·Mobile won’t show advertising to registered users. Another good reason to register, isn’t it?

We want to see if advertising is enough of a burden for users to register, this is the main reason for this experiment.
You need to know that we’ve never spammed our registered users. Actually, so far we’ve only used users email to apologize for our mistakes.

There is a little caveat for those pre-registered users. They need to re-register. Actually all they need to do is go to the registration page (where they’ll find their previous registration info) and hit the ‘submit’ button.

It is yet another way for you to interact with us, share your comments, thoughts, likes, dislikes…

What is a QNH Difference Alert?

According to Xavi J. -an experienced glider pilot- when the difference in QNH from two airfields is higher than a particular threshold, they have mountain wave at their local airfield. This could be explained by the fact that winds tend to go from higher pressure areas to lower pressure areas. And in Xavi’s particular case, when the wind blows strongly from the North and there is marked stability, they get the valued mountain wave at La Cerdanya (LECD).
I am not sure whether lots of people will be able to benefit from this kind of alert. But, who knows? You will find out, won’t you? And then, please let me know.

How do I configure the QNH Alert?

Very easy, just navigate to the appropriate Your Preferences menu and input the airport ICAO code for both stations. Then, input the QNH difference threshold (in HPa, please).

When the QNH at the second airport is higher than that of the first airport by the amount you have just cofigured, you’ll get an alert in your email (well, of course you need to Register first, if you hadn’t before)

By the way, La Cerdanya -in the Spanish Pyrenees- is a gorgeous place for mountain soaring (they get thermal, slope and wave soaring).
At the same aerodrome, you can eat at Urvati Sidrería where Eva and Urtus will make you feel at home. And last but not least, you can get your PADI degree for high altitude scuba diving at SCUBA 0.76

Give it a try next time you’re visiting from your Android, iPhone, Palm, Blackberry, or other smartphones or pda’s.

If an alert that you configured has been triggered in the last hour, the conditions for that airport will be highligted on your home page. Like this:

So, how do you configure alerts?

There are two ways:

1. From any Metar report, click on the NEW: ALERT Set up for [ICAO] link.
2. From your home page, go to Pilot Tools, and then Your Metar Alerts.

From now on, detecting which airports are under your own personal minimums will be easier than ever!

I really hope you like it!

One of the things we’ve always tried to avoid is user registration. We ourselves don’t like being forced to register in a page we visit just once in a while.

On the other hand, user registration yields lots of advantages to both the users and the ‘service providers’.

In our case, because we base lots of advantages (like showing your favourite airports up first) on cookies alone, you loose these advantages each time you delete your browsers cookies.

The only way for this not to happen is to have a unique idenifier for each user. Nowadays, the best unique identifier we can think of is a valid email address.

We’ve never spammed those users that trusted us their email address. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I sent an email to all of them. We usually only answer emails.

We have this blog as a means of comunication.

We’d like to ask those intensive users that come visit Meteo·Mobile quite often to Register. Hence, we’ve added a very small message asking for this.

In order to Register, all you need to do is visit Meteo·Mobile Registration Page. You may well end up discovering there are lots of options to choose there that you didn’t know of.

Thank you.

Now, you can calculate Sunrise/Sunset times for any coordinates, on any date.

But Wait! that’s not all! You can now (if your broser accepts AJAX) type in the name of the airport whose sunrise/sunset times you want to calculate, and voilà ! the airport’s coordinates will be populated for you.

We’re making it too easy… XD