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Flight Dispatch 98 User Manual On-line Edition

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The Weather Map

The WX tab (Alt+E, or type WXMAP, or View ▸ Weather Map) shows the weather over the region round your base, on the same projection as the Map tab. It has two charts, picked with the Chart buttons along the top. Both are drawn again every ten minutes.

Surface

The surface analysis with precipitation and cloud, in colour.

  • Precipitation is in bands by its rate, in millimetres an hour: from dark green for 0.3 mm, through green, yellow and orange, to red for 10 mm and magenta for 20 mm or more. Snow is pale blue, and nearly white where it’s heavy.
  • Cloud is grey, the thicker the lighter, over the land and sea it covers.
  • The coast is the black line, drawn over the precipitation and cloud so the land can be made out beneath them.
  • Isobars are the white lines, every 4 hPa, with their pressures on them. The closer together, the stronger the wind.
  • H and L mark the centres of highs and lows, with the pressure there. TC is a tropical cyclone.
  • Fronts have their symbols on the side they’re moving towards: blue triangles for a cold front, red half-discs for a warm front, and purple for an occlusion, with both. A front with triangles on one side and half-discs on the other is hardly moving.
  • Airports are discs coloured by flight category, from their latest report: green for VFR (ceiling above 3,000 ft and visibility above 5 miles), blue for MVFR (1,000 to 3,000 ft, or 3 to 5 miles), red for IFR (500 to 1,000 ft, or 1 to 3 miles) and magenta for LIFR (below those). The larger airports are shown; zoomed right out, only the largest.

The key is at the bottom left. If the colours are hard to tell apart, tick Patterns and shapes on the weather map under Weather in Settings: each band of precipitation then has a texture of its own, and each flight category a shape of its own (a disc, a square, a triangle and a diamond, from VFR to LIFR).

SIGWX

The significant weather chart for FL100 to FL600, as it comes off the fax: cumulonimbus in scalloped lines, jet streams as heavy arrows, fronts in black, tropical cyclones, and the weather at the larger airports. Every symbol on it, and how to read its labels, is in Reading the SIGWX chart, in the CATS Training Materials.

The line across the top is the sending machine’s: when it was sent, and the provider’s fax number.

Moving around

  • Drag the map, or use the arrow keys, to move it. While you drag, a dotted outline with a cross at its middle shows where the map will be; it’s drawn again where you let go, and REDRAWING shows until the new picture is ready.
  • + and −, Ctrl++ and Ctrl+−, or the buttons along the top, zoom in and out, from the region round an airport to the whole world.
  • Home or Ctrl+0, or the button between − and +, goes back to the region round your base.
  • Go To, along the top, moves the map to an airport: type its IATA or ICAO code and press Enter, or pick one of the airports on your routes from the list beside it.

The weather reference

Press the company’s name in the status bar, along the bottom of the window, for the company’s details: among them its weather reference, pattern and world, as given when the company was started. Two companies started with the same three have exactly the same weather, hour by hour, on any computer: give someone the reference to compare notes on the same storms. It can be selected and copied.

For one airport’s weather in full, see Weather reports and forecasts.