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joanna
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Hello, It would be helpful if there was an option in the Setup menu to permanently disable the automatic wind predictions for route planning (so to assume a zero-wind conditions). Especially useful when planning a route a few days ahead. BTW, it's not clear to me how does Sky Demon come up with the wind forecasts? The documentation [1] says vaguely: " SkyDemon knows what the wind is forecast to be doing anywhere on the globe, at all common VFR altitudes and up to 24 hours ahead."Is it taken from GAMET forecasts, some numeric global weather model (e.g. GFS), or perhaps worked out from METARs/TAFs by using some heuristics? Can the developers please elaborate more on this? |
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adhawkins
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Out of interest, why do you want to do this? From memory, if you plan a route far enough in advance to not have any forecasts, SkyDemon will tell you, and plan the route based on nil wind. Andy
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stevelup
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Pretty sure it uses the GFS model. If you want to disable it:- Weather > Tools > Enroute Wind Conditions and enter '0/0' in the All Legs box.
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Tim Dawson
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There is no way to permanently disable the integration of forecast winds aloft. This is one of the core SkyDemon features, and we have no plans to introduce a feature which disables it. You can specify your own manual wind values, but this is not persistent when you save and reload the route.
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joanna
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The reason to disable wind forecasts is to make the planning deterministic and ensure no magic-things-happening-behind-my-back-without-my-full-understanding-or-consent. Tim, can you please confirm how does the SD compute the wind forecasts? Can you please update the online documentation to make this clear? I surely understand that this might be a cool feature and that most users might appreciate it, but why not provide a switch to disable this feature for those who have a different opinion? Like you do for many other features that could be disabled per user wish? The necessity to click several times and set 0/0 manually each time I plan a route is much inconvenient.
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guille
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What I do if I plan a route in advance, is just to inverse it ... and the time average will be, in principle, the same as the one with wind 0...
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ckurz7000
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guille (12/06/2014)
What I do if I plan a route in advance, is just to inverse it ... and the time average will be, in principle, the same as the one with wind 0... Unfortunately not. If you have a significant crosswind component the averaged times will NOT reflect the time achieved with no wind. However that may be, personally, I don't need this option. -- Chris.
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Tim Dawson
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SkyDemon doesn't compute forecasts or conjure them out of METAR or TAF data. We use an established forecast model (the Global Forecast System). It has been used for aviation purposes since its inception, indeed I believe that was one of the reasons it was started. It's what is used by aviation across the globe as a source of the most reliable predictions of wind vectors aloft.
If there were a lot of people who didn't want SkyDemon to automatically use these wind forecasts, we'd probably have an option to turn them off.
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Joseph
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' The necessity to click several times and set 0/0 manually each time I plan a route is much inconvenient.' On PC it is enough to set zero wind once for the whole route, all legs will change to that (Weather.. Enroute conditions..). Other possible trick: set exact DEP time but date. The suggested feature I think is useful but no pain if stays... Joseph
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Tim Dawson
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On all SkyDemon platforms you can set an "override wind" for all legs of 0/0 at the same time. There should be no need to go through doing it for each leg.
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Russ_H
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Inputting 0/0 has no effect (win 10), the wind speed stays the same and when I return to the setting it is back on auto
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Russ_H
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P.S. If anyone still doubts the need for this feature, try working on a flight plan for a month ahead from abergavenny to kikbride involving some complicated airspace needing a few course changes in an aircraft that cruises at 60 knots using today's wind (ok I could change the date, but with no idea of weather a month ahead using nil wind is the most convenient and logical baseline)
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Tim Dawson
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This was solved years ago. You simply enter 0/0 to override the wind settings to nil for any/all legs. If you're having problems achieving this, give us a call and we will talk you through it.
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Oliver Seack
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+xThis was solved years ago. You simply enter 0/0 to override the wind settings to nil for any/all legs. If you're having problems achieving this, give us a call and we will talk you through it. Hi Tim,
the integration of the GFS wind forecast model date dependent on up to +24h time, location and altitude is really a very powerful feature of SkyDemon. I love it and do not want to miss it for flight preparation on the day of flight and the day before! It is really great!!!
However, when planning a route weeks and month ahead (as I am doing a lot to prepare longer flights to foreign countries) and today's wind conditions are 30 knots tail or head wind, the whole ETEs and calculated fuel consumption in the Pilot Log can get quite unrealistic compared the actual might opposite conditions during the flight.
Thus, I was very happy to find a hint in the manual that the automatic wind forecast data can be overridden manually :-)
However I had the same problem as Russ_H: I couldn't find the menu/function to override the wind of all legs manually in the Windows 10 version of SkyDmeon Plan. The SD manual is easy to understand for the Andoid App. No Problem with that.
But finding it in the PC version was really tedious for me. The problem for me was to recognize the "Weather Tools" button in the weather window as button. When I did look at the weather window, as suggested by the manual, I thought "Weather Tools" is just a tab w/o any function behind it.
This was due to the fact that the button text has no boundary around it, which optically characterizes it as an button, one can press on. The background colour and the button colour are identical. Only if you move over the button by chance, it will switch is color. But as it is located so far up in the right corner I actually did never hit it arbitrarily.
The second reason was, I did not interpret the button names "Weather Tools" as "Here you can find some nice powerful tools to manipulate the weather" Instead I was thinking "Why did they add a second headline "Weather Tools" if the window has already a headline "Weather".
I was really desperate as couldn't find it. I was just on my way to request this feature, when I found this discussion in the SD forum.
There are two things, which really would have helped me to find it much more easily:
If the word "Weather Tools" would have appeared and explained with a single sentence in the manual and if a simple small picture would exist, saying "Just click on this button "Weather Tools"!"
I would really appreciate to find these small pieces of additional information in a future version of the SD manual and I think many more beginners with SD would be grateful too.
Best Regards,
Oliver
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Hannah@SkyDemon
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Thanks for your feedback. A small edit has been made in the User Guide, which will appear after the next update.
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Johannes B.
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The easiest way to disable wind forecast values for flights in the future is to change the departure date in the pull down menu to the date of the planned flight or at least 5 days in the future, which will disable winds aloft due to missing forecast values...
YouTube channel
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