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3/16/2016 11:48 AM
 
I downloaded and installed Skew t. I did not find the guide you referred to, only a link to the SSA that one has to sign in to use, so I did not bother. It would make the app a lot more useful if there was a key to what each of the colored lines is.
Where is the user guide located?
 
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3/16/2016 1:06 PM
 

I found the quick start guide when I touched the menu button (bottom left corner of the phone) after opening the app.

Thanks Jeff for pointing us to this - I just need to figure out what all I'm seeing now :-)

 
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3/16/2016 1:56 PM
 
I find the quick start guide is not a lot of use. It does not tell me what the red. blue and green lines on the chart are. It does not indicate what the correlation is between the lines on the chart and the vertical graph marked Speed. Nor does it tell me what the other (diagonal) bars on the chart are. Without that sort of information, for me the app is useless. It would not make a lot of sense to me to have something as vague as this in iFly. Apply the KISS principle!
 
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3/16/2016 11:23 PM
 

Frank, this is the rocket surgery of weather prognostication; you're not going to understand it without some effort. Especially from a free app. A Google search for "RUC Soundings" or "Skew-T" should give you several ways to learn how they work. Here's a great explanation of how to use them, and it can also double as a cure for insomnia:

http://williams.best.vwh.net/weather/skewtlogp.pdf

Or if you prefer to fall asleep watching a video, try this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLA-arcI2Zw

Not all Skew-T's use the same colors, but once you can read one you can read them all.

Cliff's Notes version:

RED wiggly line is the temperature and it's always to the right of the BLUE (sometimes green) wiggly line, which is dewpoint. When the two are fairly close, you have scattered clouds. Really close = broken clouds. Touching = overcast. Touching for a while - overcast layer thickness. The straight lines slanted upwards to the right represent temperatures. Where the wiggly red line crosses the 0deg (celcius) line is the the freezing level. So with a quick glance you can picture the clouds/cloud layers/cloud thickness, and if the freezing level is in the clouds. The links I just gave will have you reading the basic Skew-T stuff in no time.

And I didn't say iFly should include this information, at least not until about version 20. I just wanted to point out another way to get winds aloft info along with other important flight information. Whether someone uses it is totally up to them. My "real world" use a few weeks ago was this: Storms prevented our late afternoon departure, so we planned to depart the next morning before sunup. Concerned about fog and ice, I looked at the Skew-T and it forecast a 1,000' ceiling 3,000 foot thick, and clear above that with the freezing level at about 9,000. And that's exactly what we had at departure. Knowing the cloud levels and tops is a big help when deciding on a cruise altitude.


Jeff Nokomis Clark, Mooney M20G, iFly app on ASUS ZenPad Z8s, ASUS ZenFone AR, ASUS Windows 10 tablet, Stratux ADS-B w AHRS
 
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3/17/2016 11:54 AM
 
Thank you Jeff, time for some homework!
 
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