Gadgetry 101

Those of us using a moving map with datalinked weather depiction-especially Nexrad radar-should be careful of relying on it too heavily. There are numerous stories of Nexrad not matching what the Mk. I, Mod. 1 eyeball displays. Heres mine. Last summer, my wife and I flew our 1976 Piper Arrow over to Great Harbor Cay Bahamas from Miami, Fla.s Tamiami Airport. We typically leave late morning to avoid afternoon thunderstorms. With our briefing, DVFR flightplan and Eapis paperwork taken care of, all we had to do was fly the route. Everything looked good from the weather standpoint, but in the summer things can and do change rapidly.

Key Takeaways:

• Pilots should exercise caution and not solely rely on datalinked weather, like Nexrad, as it can be inaccurate or display obsolete data.
• The author encountered an unforecast thunderstorm and significant turbulence during a flight, despite their in-cockpit weather display showing clear conditions.
• The discrepancy occurred because Nexrad experienced an outage around the time of takeoff, causing the cockpit system to display outdated and misleading weather information.
• The incident highlights the critical need to always compare datalinked weather with visual observations and be aware of the inherent limitations and potential lag of such systems.

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