Ibra wrote:
I don’t see that many “weather specialists” & “private pilots” in UK/Europe? most people who seems to talk or advise on pilot weather and speak as expert on the topic don’t even have PPL, let alone fly in weather
We have a couple where I work. Everyone however passes the same met exams we do up to ATPL level plus a bunch of others. Aviation meteorology and what is important for flyiers is a strong focal point in the education of anyone who is rated to do aviation meteorology. While not that many of them fly, they do know the issues and what is important to us. Each of them passes a thorough basic course on aviation theory outside the met parts, I instruct part of that, including airplane performance, meteorological dangers to aviation e.t.c. They do regular refreshers on that as well plus get immersion with airlines and / or other pilots with observer flights.
If a personal contact with a forecaster is so important in order to extract his magical knowledge, why can’t that knowledge be reflected in TAFs?
If he’s not doing that, what is he being paid for? 
Years ago, I used various premium rate (say £2/minute) professional forecaster services. I seen to recall one of them was working for Avbrief but later they stopped it and I was phoning up some others. I rarely got the feeling they offered anything which wasn’t fairly obvious from the normal wx charts and I’d say that today windy.com offers a much more comprehensive picture. These guys would apparently login into the UK Met Office 3D model, for which they were paying a few k a year, and tell me stuff which today windy.com gives you for free from the ECMWF model (not from the UK MO model, which is still “secret”).
I get the feeling that times have moved on big-time but there is a lot of inertia in the training system.
I had no problem with PPL met in 1964 and, revalidating PPL, 1987.
I’ve been interested in weather since a toddler, in my father’s arms, as he discussed the weather with other skippers on the cliff above the harbour.
It’s not about beating the professionals. It’s to notice signs that they’ve got it wrong, where you are, and at that time.
Maybe more useful in more sparsely populated areas.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The primary problem with using online ressources is that the personal contact with the forecaster does not happen.
JFYI, in the UK this contact does not happen at all – I’ve never been briefed a live forecaster… MetOffice forms, windy.com…
Peter wrote:
A lot of questions on the meaning of symbols on Form 215
The main problem I see with wx at the PPL level is that the training system is trying to instill way too much fear into pilots. So much so that they end up binning many flights that would have been perfectly fine. In the UK, in good wx days, there is almost always a PROB40 marginal weather, and a PROB30 IFR weather. And then one needs to explain to the examiner why one decides to fly even though the TAF is forecasting “potential” IFR weather.
What this does to the, let’s say “more experienced” pilot, or more “fly-prone” pilot, is the same effect that a speed limit sign of 30 in a perfectly straight dual carriageway in the middle of nowhere has on drivers: people ignore it. Pilots will get in the habit of ignoring met warnings because they are mostly ultra-conservative PROB99 of the time.
And this is dangerous because sometimes wx warnings are actually useful. One just needs to know how to separate the useful ones from the rubbish ones. Just like with NOTAMs.
And all of the above is only for weather at the AERODROME and vicinity level. Of course ZERO MET knowledge of any value is taught to pilots who wish to fly places. The F215 is always full of junk, too much information, it’s useless to make any go/no-go decision because if all you had was an F215 and you had to fly somewhere, you’d NEVER fly!
Too much information is as bad as no information sometimes.
Once in the air, you get much information. For pleasure flying, you can go somewhere else.Or turn back. Often the Scottish forecast is more like a climate description. I look and avoid “cloud covering hills” areas unless there are clear valleys. I avoid the turbulent downdraft side of ridges. I watch for signs of change..
Well for pleasure flying, you can have 100% dispatch rate with “local flights” into all sort of nasty weather: known icing, dodging thunderstorms, 45kts winds…all done safely with no pressure, one should not extrapolate any of that to mission success under get-there-itis on a long leg to an unfamiliar environment, that is where things start to bite….
Peter wrote:
Is there any point in learning it to such detail… effectively pretending we can out-forecast the computer models
Yes it is, and I do wonder why nobody came up with it. Even in 2021 weather still tends not to behave as forecasted, and any forecast is valid with some kind of resolution, let’s say an area of 10000km². So on a multi-hour flight (which is what we’re released to when obtaining a PPL) you will most probably encounter non-forecasted weather, which maybe on your route or not. And in this situation, you shall have learned any possibility to understand the weather situation, taking into account possibilities on how to obtain new weather info and how to avoid bad situations – and yes, make a forecast on your own, maybe even without the help of any computer.
Is there severe weather outside? Just take a look outside. What about the route? Look at the actual weather charts, where you’ve learned how to interpret. Is severe weather forecasted? Where do I get that information from? And to what degree can I trust that information? Bad weather develops, but will I be able to fly anyhow? I think that these questions will still be the same for quite some decades.
I’m actually in these very days running through the exam preparation for IR MET, and so far I haven’t come by any question which I found not to be of any significance right away. They skipped anything related to “fax” or “telex” anyway, and it’s not as “up to date” as it could be, that’s true. But from all the syllabus that I’ve gone through now, MET (and maybe flight planning) is the most relevant part for real-world flying.
The real question which seems to lie behind the inital posting might be: Can we introduce some intermediate step for pilots who only want to perform local flights? Or with some restriction, that whenever “bad weather” is forecast or possible, flying would be prohibited? Because if not, you will need all this information.
I find an understanding of the theory to be very useful – I like to have a big-picture idea of what the weather is doing at the moment.
That said, I have not looked at Met Office forms 214 and 215 for many years. I get the big picture from a synoptic chart and the rest from TAFs, METARs and looking out the window.
Form 215 contains far too much ‘maybe’ and is so conservative that you’d never fly if it were your only source. Form 214 is obsolete because winds aloft, other than the general situation (check no 50kt headwind), don’t matter much to someone who isn’t using dead reckoning to navigate.
Rainfall radar maps are useful for (a) cricket captaincy decisions, and (b) choosing when to hang the laundry out.
