Pilot Reports

Got it, subscribed to XM and played with it on the ground. I had to test fly a Bonanza after an autopilot repair and there was a line of CB’s approaching. I flew straight for them. The stormscope 1000 in this plane was "spoking" so it wouldn’t indicate with any precision the actual location of the line. Awesome! I could actually find "holes" through the line without having to patrol for them. The rain boundaries depicted on the map coincided so close to the actual rain that it amazed me. I expected the delay from NEXRAD to be appreciable, but in reality you hardly notice it. I can already tell that this will dramatically increase the utility of my plane and all the other ones I fly. We leave tomorrow for a long weekend in Houston. I feel so much more relaxed knowing that I’ll have the big picture when I have to face the inevitable summer time line.

And on a subsequent flight... 

We made it back from Houston. On our way I was 1.5 hours in moderate turbulence and ended up riveted to the gages at night. Being in the clouds and knowing that there were no monsters lurking in there really gave me peace of mind. We shot a GPS 27 @ KAXH with a circle to land on 09. (I appreciated the night mode and the increased situational awareness.)

On departure from KAXH we were cleared on the Alexandria2 SID and being vectored to the Lufkin VOR to pick up the route. About 60 miles from Lufkin I realized that our clearance would take us through some heavy stuff depicted on the PDA (lots of red and lightning bolts). I requested an amendment to our routing and ZHU cleared us direct to KMBO. As we flew in front of the storms I heard a Challenger and a Citation requesting deviations from Lufkin. One of them indicated that he was painting the storms in excess of 50K! I switched to the Tops mode and could confirm that they were over 45K! Center indicated that he was only showing a little precipitation on his scope and was caught off guard by the size and rapid development of the storms. Our clearance would have taken us through these storms.

Later in the flight the temp dew point spread was going to be tight for our arrival into KMBO. I used the Metar function to check the conditions at two airports near our destination and was greeted with 10 miles visibility and a 2 degree spread. I found a few airports close by with greater spreads and had mentally prepared my alternate plans if we did get socked in.

This is a good system. The weather depictions were downloading every 5 minutes (like clockwork) and I could easily look far ahead for the "big picture". The "menuing" is different from what I am used to, but I am learning it. I can already see that the echo tops are going to be a good tool to have in the "tool box" as well.