On Mar 30, 10:40 pm, "Jay Honeck" wrote:

That's funny. I just flew my family transcontinentally 2500 miles in a
single-piston-engine spam-can, all VFR, over a six day period, during the
most weather-variable time of year, using the best technology available --
and you're saying that using this technology makes me a "crayola-viator"?

You certainly are a Crayola-viator if you simply followed the magenta
line and avoided the yellow and the red.

Do those colors *mean* anything to you?

Dude -- I *design* new technologies for the US Navy in my current
engineering job.

BUT -- and please read carefully -- VFR or IFR pilots who cannot
already "know" in their heads what the XM is displaying are poor
pilots who lack the understanding of weather required to fly cross
country.

And yeah -- I've flown XC VFR and IFR.

In VFR flight, the XM display should be used like the GPS display --
a confirmation of what you already know.

VFR is easy -- before you take off you did a full weather brief and
know where the VFR wx is and where it isn't. You know the movements of
the fronts, the dewpoints, and the topography and how it will change
what is observed now to what it will be when you get there.

Then you launch and you look out the damn windscreen and decide where
you can and can't fly.

The single most critical data XM provides to IFR flight is location
and direction of embedded cells at update rates faster than what
Center gets.

I'll repeat this to be more clear -- GPS and XM are tools that should
support/confirm/ and sometimes -- in minor ways -- correct what you --
as the pilot -- already know.

If that's not the case you are placing undue dependence on the
technology and shirking your responsibilities and legal requirements
as PIC.


Dan Mc

You're not a curmudgeon -- you're a Luddite.

Why thank you.