[Not sure if this belongs here or Back Country Flying…am posting in both locations.]
Hi all,
I'm writing to find out about ADS-B In weather coverage in/over the Rocky Mountains.
My wife and I are planning our first trip to the Pacific Northwest from the Chicago area, with a stop in Colorado on the way out. I recently completed the AOPA ASF course in Mountain Flying, and one item stuck with me: weather (it can change rapidly, I gather, and the reporting stations are few and far between.)
We will be flying a normally-aspirated Cessna 182, with two aboard, so we'll have pretty good, not tremendous altitude capability. The aircraft has a Garmin GTX 345 Mode S transponder with ADS-B and Bluetooth capability and a Garmin GPS 530W that can display weather. I normally use iFlyGPS on a tablet for an EFB, and it has the ability to also display weather and traffic from ADS-B in. (I've used a Stratux box for this in the past; just learned how to pair the 345 via Bluetooth; hopefully this will work even better.)
We are IFR equipped and capable, though prefer VFR, and will plan mostly to roughly follow interstate highways.
My question is this: How good is the ADS-B In weather coverage in the mountains? I've read that it can be spotty, but I haven't found any definitive guide on this.
Is there an altitude above which we will be pretty sure to receive weather data anywhere in the Rockies? Is coverage better along certain routes?
Hope you can help,
Steve W.
Steve
@Steven Whitney
When I flew my Maule MX-7-180 from Hickory NC to McCall ID in 2016, I tried to get VFR flight following over the Rockies. They wanted me to climb to 15,000 MSL in order to get radar coverage. My normally aspirated Lycoming O-360-C1F engine could only do 11,500. I had a Stratus 2 with ForeFlight on an iPad Mini at the time for ADS-B In. It was pretty much the same for FIS-B weather. I listened to all the AWOS for weather. I crossed the Rockies west of Casper WY to Logan UT at 11,000. Now there is a network of weather cameras accessible on the Internet from the ground that helps a lot. In the air, I wouldn't count on getting good ADS-B weather below 15,000 MSL. SiriusXM satellite weather would probably be better but I didn't have it.
I have an old Garmin GPSMAP 396 portable that used to have a SiriusXM subscription.
Maybe I'll have to see if I can get it working.
Steve
If you get into Idaho, you can look at our webcams/weather stations at WWW.Eye-N-Sky.Net . The FAA is working on pulling lots of webcams in the lower 48 together as well - still a work in progress. Have fun!!
We will be flying through Idaho on both the way out (Boise) and the way back (Coeur D'Alene).
Steve