NZFF

Here's a curly weather question.

I run FS9 on a PC that isn't connected to the internet but would like to take advantage of some of the real weather. Instead of connecting to a weather server to get live weather, can the current (or recent) weather be downloaded in some form of file that can be put on an off-line PC?

Ive had a quick look around and the only thing i can see that can be done is to put a weather theme in the weather folder ,,but that is not realworld weather data ,that is something you make with a weather maker program i think..another way ive thought of is to get the machine online or a friend could and do a flight the normal way of doing things and save it ,then the person would send you the file of there save flight with updated weather info ,you would inturn put that file in your flights folder and activate it on the select flights menu
it should or id thing save the weather patten at the time ,so could be as easy as that really
hope this helps
mike

Dan wrote:

QUOTE(Dan @ Aug 11 2007, 10:03 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I run FS9 on a PC that isn't connected to the internet but would like to take advantage of some of the real weather. Instead of connecting to a weather server to get live weather, can the current (or recent) weather be downloaded in some form of file that can be put on an off-line PC?

Yes, it's very possible. Though you would need to download a copy of FSMetar avaliable here. This is both an on and offline weather programme. After this is set up you would need to download the relevant METAR data text (from either NOAA, IVACO or VATSIM) and save it to FSMetar. Full instructions on how to use the programme are included.

Hope this is of some small assistance.

Thanks for that advice. I've downloaded FSMETAR and read the user manual that comes with it. I'm told I need to install msinet.cab, MSComCtl.cab and comdlg32.cab and I have downloaded those files but I don't know where they should go. Any suggestions?

Hi Dan,

All these should go in your Windows/system32 folder.

ZK-LGD wrote:

QUOTE(ZK-LGD @ Aug 17 2007, 03:32 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

All these should go in your Windows/system32 folder.

Thanks for that, the programme is going now. The next step was to download some real weather data and get FSMetar to load it and send it to FS9. I went to one of the weather servers listed and saved the data as a text file. When I went to FSMetar to load that saved text file I got an error messages saying it wasn't a valid METAR file. I know the file should have a .txt extension because that's the only file it will let me load. I think there is something missing in the file that FSMetar is looking for to determine that it is a valid file. Does anyone have an old FSMetar text file that I can look at to see if there is some kind of header information in the saved file?

The files I have been dowloading are from the IVAO (although I've tried the others) url: http://www.ivao.aero/network/metar.asp

Dan

Hi Dan,

The following is a METAR.txt file saved at 0000Zulu 19.05.2007. As you can see, there's no header. This was downloaded off the NOAA site. Cut and paste it to a text file; it does work.

[Edited due to size]

Thanks ZK-LGD. Success! It does work.

I used the text you posted and there were no problems. I tried again with the VATSIM weathers. There's a garbled bit in the middle of the file that ends in 'user-agent: yandex' and this causes FSMetar to reject the file. It worked fine when I took that bit out. It still doesn't like the IVAO text file though, there might be an error in it somewhere that I haven't noticed. NOAA seems good though, with better coverage of Australia and Pacific sites. How did you get the file in the format you posted though? When I go to the URL, I get the weathers in a format like this:

2007/08/12 23:45
KRUQ 122345Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM CLR 32/21 A3000 RMK AO2

2007/08/12 23:50
KVUJ 122350Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM 32/17 A2999 RMK AO2

2007/08/12 23:45
KRUQ 122345Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM CLR 32/21 A3000 RMK AO2

[Edit] I've got it all working now. It can be a bit temperamental and it limits itself to just how many METARs it will load (more than a thousand shouldn't be sniffed at). Otherwise, it looks like a good utility.

Cheers,

Dan

Dan wrote:

QUOTE(Dan @ Aug 13 2007, 05:51 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks ZK-LGD. Success! It does work.

I used the text you posted and there were no problems. I tried again with the VATSIM weathers. There's a garbled bit in the middle of the file that ends in 'user-agent: yandex' and this causes FSMetar to reject the file. It worked fine when I took that bit out. It still doesn't like the IVAO text file though, there might be an error in it somewhere that I haven't noticed. NOAA seems good though, with better coverage of Australia and Pacific sites. How did you get the file in the format you posted though? When I go to the URL, I get the weathers in a format like this:

2007/08/12 23:45
KRUQ 122345Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM CLR 32/21 A3000 RMK AO2

2007/08/12 23:50
KVUJ 122350Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM 32/17 A2999 RMK AO2

2007/08/12 23:45
KRUQ 122345Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM CLR 32/21 A3000 RMK AO2

[Edit] I've got it all working now. It can be a bit temperamental and it limits itself to just how many METARs it will load (more than a thousand shouldn't be sniffed at). Otherwise, it looks like a good utility.

Okay.

The METAR format you describe (above) is a direct download from the NOAA site. You could, of course, strip the date stamps manually (shudder!). It would, however, be far better to load a second copy of FSMetar onto the computer that does have access to the Internet and download the METAR via FSMetar, then copy the resultant .txt file over to your FS computer. As for IVAO, I seem to remember there was a new .ini file released that took care of this problem. As I have been using Active Sky 6 for some time now, I no longer use FS Metar; but you're right, it is a good freeware utility (especially as an real world offline weather generator).

Of course, your edit says you have now got things things working. That's great.