Page 26 - Volume 15 Number 3

Using the radar alone was like watching a baseball game through a paper towel tube. Typical radar systems paint the weather ahead of the airplane, so when paralleling a line of weather, the radar won’t show the complete picture.and a Garmin Aera 560. Having both systems operational in the same plane was a real eye-opener. I’ve used them during a full summer of flying around thunderstorms and a winter of snow and icing. The Aera clearly displays the age of the data being shown. The oldest I can everrecall seeing is seven minutes, but something between two and three minutes old is most common. Many of the radar proponents claim this delay is a real problem; at jet speeds perhaps, but I can honestly say that at twin recip speeds, it is not.On one particular dark and stormy night, on a flight from Columbus, Ohio to Alpena, in northeast lower Michigan, there was a line of thunderstorms that extended from approximately Grand Rapids, in southwest lower Michigan, northeast into Canada. There was no way I was going to go through the line, forcing me to go around the backside of it. To get around it, I had to make a 90-degree left turn away from my original route of flight.When I was pointed toward Grand Rapids and the weather was clearing ahead of us, behind the line of thunderstorms, the radar screen was painting less and less, but all the weather was off to our right side. The radar couldn’t see it unless I were to turn the plane toward it, but the Nexrad clearly showed that I still had a way to go before turning toward my destination. Using the radar alone was like watching a baseball game through a paper towel tube. Without the Aera, I was left with either turning toward and away from the weather or repeatedly pestering ATC as to what they were seeing.On another summer day, I was flying from North Carolina to Michigan. There was another line of thunderstorms in my path, or more accurately two lines. The lines were separate but overlapping. With one line closer to me than the second line. To both the radar and my set of “mark-one eyeballs” looking out the window, it looked like one solid line. The type of line that I would not have normally penetrated. The Aera clearly showed the two distinct lines with enough space in betweenSelect Air- parts Third Page 4/C Ad24 • ­TWIN & TURBINEMARCH 2011Dan Weatherford Photo