Aero-Linx!

Scouring the information super airways can sometimes be a tough, if educational, task for the Aero-News staff... but it also allows us to check out some truly neat and exciting sites, so it's not that bad a gig. On any given day, we may check dozens (and often hundreds) of different sources for story ideas, and facts confirmation. And, as is the nature of our business, much of this is done on the Internet.

The ANN gang decided we probably shouldn't keep some of the neat sites, info resources, and organizations we've discovered to ourselves... so we decided to bring you Aero-Linx. These are the sites that WE check out -- when we need added perspective, a new spin on a day's topic... or just want to escape into cyber-aero-space for awhile.

Look for some of our favorite sites, coming each day to ANN via Aero-Linx. Suggestions for future Aero-Linx segments are always welcome, as well.

Aero-Linx: Weather Service Flight Path Tool

ANN Editor Tom Patton (our resident New-Guy... you'll be hearing more about him shortly) stumbled across this looking into the story on the potential closure of 20 regional ATC Weather centers. It's a JAVA tool from The National Weather Service that will allow you to see an animated view of what weather is forecast along your route of flight at various altitudes. It requires you to download the application to your computer, but after that runs resident, and can remember settings of multiple data layers for things such as METARS, wind barbs, SIGMETS, and icing, along with topography and roads. A pretty neat little application for pilots.

FMI: http://adds.aviationweather.gov/fpt_application/