AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2020 - 97

P&E

WX WATCH

Apps on parade

FINALLY!
A CARD
FOR PILOTS.

A roundup of eight aviation weather apps
BY THOMAS A. HORNE

RADARSCOPE

Cash Back1 Select
AOPA Partners
CASH BACK1 APPLIED AS STATEMENT CREDIT.

WHAT DID WE DO TO GET weather infor-

mation before smartphones? Calling
Flight Service or going online were the
most popular-or only-options. But now
we carry the weather with us on our
iPhones, Androids, or tablets, giving us
on-the-go accessibility to a wide range
of aviation weather information. There
must be hundreds of aviation weather
apps out there, and if you're like me, you
have more than one of them running on
your smartphone.
They vary in content and quality, of
course. One pilot's cherished go-to app
may be another's dud. With that in mind,
here are brief rundowns of some of the
aviation weather apps on my iPhone. One
caveat: Unlike some apps that include
flight planning and performance functions-such as AOPA Go (free to members,
by the way), FltPlan Go, or ForeFlight
Mobile-these offer weather information
only. Another caveat: These and other aviation weather apps provide supplemental
information. They're not substitutes
for an official, FAA-endorsed weather
briefing.

Radarscope ($9.99 annually; add Pro
Tier One for an extra $9.99 per year;
Pro Tier Two for $14.99 per month or
$99.99 annually) This full-featured radar
analysis app is useful in both warm and
cold seasons. It displays many datasets of
Doppler weather imagery from the nation's
network of WSR-88D ground-based radars.
Most of us are familiar with composite (full
vertical coverage) and base (single-angle
coverage) reflectivity images, and this
app lets you study them closely. Severe
weather warning boxes are also plotted.
Other nice features include echo top and
precipitation depictions, which identify
areas of snow, ice, rain, and large droplet precipitation. For other products, like
storm relative velocity (to locate couplets
of adjoining red and green returns that
indicate potential tornados), a familiarity with radar weather is helpful. With the
Pro Tier One subscription you get lightning
plots, 30-frame loops, and crosshairs to target specific areas within storm cells. Pro
Tier Two provides serious weather geeks
with archived radar data, Storm Prediction
Center outlooks, and hail contours. Yes, it's
aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 97

Switch today to the
new AOPA credit card,
and stop paying too
much on your
aviation purchases.

Visit

AOPA.org/creditcard
to learn more

*Certain points and purchases restrictions apply, see full Rewards
Terms and Conditions for full details at AOPA.org/creditcard.
1 Rewards points can be redeemed for Cash Back or other items provided through AOPA Pilot Rewards. A Cash Back redemption is applied
as a statement credit. The statement credit will reduce your balance
but you are still required to make at least your minimum payment. A
minimum of 2,500 points is needed to redeem for Cash Back. Values
for non-cash back redemption items such as merchandise, gift cards,
and travel may vary.

http://www.AOPA.org/creditcard http://www.AOPA.org/creditcard http://www.aopa.org/pilot

AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2020

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