On Apr 1, 9:23*am, Eric Greenwell wrote:
On 4/1/2011 9:13 AM, Mike the Strike wrote:

On Apr 1, 8:28 am, *wrote:
On Apr 1, 8:20 am, John
wrote:

Blipmaps show up upside down after upgrading to firefox 4. Has anyone
seen and solved this problem?
Thanks
John Cochrane

Just wait til tomorrow.

Just switch to XC Skies - readable interactive maps that are always
the right way up and more features.

Haven't looked at Blipmaps since switching two years ago.

Before you switch, make sure the forecasts are adequate for your
purposes. A good interface and more features have little value if the
forecasts don't match your weather. In fact, I still prefer the Blipmap
interface by a small margin - quick, easy, adequate.

I followed both for a couple years, and Blipmaps gave more reliable
forecasts in my primary area, the Pacific NW. The "more features" were
intriguing, but not useful because they used the GFS model, which works
poorly in the NW area. I'll revisit XC Skies when they NAM model is
available with the "more features".

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarmhttp://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl

Eric:

XC Skies allows the user to choose between GFS, NAM and RUC for the
immediate forecasts. Each model has its advantages and disadvantages
and it's not always obvious that one is better than another. Our
experience in Arizona is that GFS gives a good overview a few days
ahead, but that NAM is the overall winner. RUC is often very good,
but we have found it frequently to overestimate wind speeds.

A feature I really like is to get point forecasts and skew-t charts
for specific locations without having to input the lat/long. I have
found the skew-t from the Rapid Refresh model as the best forecast
available. It will be very interesting when this new model supersedes
RUC - I think we'll see a dramatic improvement in soaring forecasts.

As Andy has pointed out, it's not always obvious which model they
choose for some of the features, but I hope to find this out as I use
it more.

There is talk amongst some of the forecast techies of developing Dr.
Jack's RASP models into an XC Skies format, which would be very
useful.

Mike