"Herbert Kilian" wrote in message
om...
Martin,
In trying to understand the basics of of what underlies Dr. Jack's
forecast, I also look at the following site (Link is on the good
Doctor's page at the bottom:
http://www-frd.fsl.noaa.gov/mab/soundings/java/
The advantage I see in this NOAA site is in the direct depiction of
"virtual soundings" for every hour of the forecast day. The site
predicts the air mass structure with temps, dew points and winds for
an airport of your choice, in my case Aurora (ARR), Illinois. The
little Java applet that loads with the page allows you to 'hover' your
pointer on the graph at your local altitude and predicted temperature.
Upon clicking, the program draws the dry and wet adiabates, showing
cloud bases and temperature spread. I usually look at the hours from
12PM to 6PM and get at very good idea of how the day is shaping up and
when it's dying.
Being so close to Lake Michigan I appreciate of course the mapping of
all the other parameters on Dr. Jack's site in determining what area
to fly in.
Herb Kilian, J7

Also, clicking and dragging out a rectangle allows you to "zoom in" on that
area of interest. So, for example, if you don't expect to get to 60,000
feet that day, you can get a rectangle that only goes to, say, 18,000.

Tim Ward