ATIS question

[Zimmerbz]

What is the best way of getting the ATIS? What I mean is, the other day I was getting clearance out of Denver and asked what runway I can expect. ATC said, "ATIS Alpha" is current. Typically when I get the weather I'll go online and get the METAR for the particular airport and I can best guess what runway will be in use. However, where is he getting that ALPHA is current? When simply putting the freq in the radio, I can get the default P3D ATIS but I don't think that is very accurate and it wasn't Alpha. Is there a better method that will give weather and active runways?

[Keith Smith]

www.myflightroute.com

[kleistad]

A quick question, will the ATIS from myflightroute.com be incorporated in PE?
Meaning that the ATIS message from myflightroute.com will be played over the ATIS frequenzy

[Keith Smith]

It is being worked on, slowly. There are a couple of solutions out there, but they're not quite what we're looking for. They're also x-plane specific.

[kleistad]

It is being worked on, slowly. There are a couple of solutions out there, but they're not quite what we're looking for. They're also x-plane specific.

Are these solutions available now for x-plane users?

[Keith Smith]

Not that I know of.

[Zimmerbz]

http://www.myflightroute.com

Thanks! This is great. I do want to ask how accurate this is in terms of runway use. Both times the ATIS gave me the opposite runway. Kden-KPhx was my route. ATIS gave me 7L but atc had me at 25r and at kden ATIS had landing north but I was given 16l. Not the end of the world but I was curious. Thanks!!

[chaseklvk]

Thanks! This is great. I do want to ask how accurate this is in terms of runway use. Both times the ATIS gave me the opposite runway. Kden-KPhx was my route. ATIS gave me 7L but atc had me at 25r and at kden ATIS had landing north but I was given 16l. Not the end of the world but I was curious. Thanks!!

This ATIS page will automatically adjust flows according to the specific SOPs for the respective airport. Sometimes, real world towers will adjust the flow outside of the strict standard of the SOP (i.e. if the SOP says south flow with a 10kt tailwind, an airport might switch to south flow with an 8kt tailwind, especially if the TAF forecasts a future tailwind of greater magnitude). For larger airports, they rely heavily on forecasts because it takes a lot of effort to "turn the ship." The ATIS page relies on the SOPs, combine this with the fact that we generally do not have the time to allocate to monitoring forecasts, and you get a system that may not be 100% aligned with real world operations. We are able to manually adjust the flow of the airport within the ATIS page, and attempt to make the flows as accurate as possible. In general, take a look at the ATIS page and it is safe to assume that PE will be using that flow. I hope this answers your question.

[wesyin]

I've been getting the weather info from myflightroute.com, which I understand is the same system that the PE controllers are using. Because I don't want to land with a 20kt tailwind, I set X Plane to track the real weather at a small time interval, hoping that the X Plane weather will be consistent with the PE weather. Although there are still different wind directions and speeds, I haven't had any landing with bad tailwinds yet.

What puzzles me is the occasional altimeter differences that are a bit too large when I want to have an accurate altitude reading. I assume that the X Plane altimeter leads to a more accurate altitude in my own sim. Well, I wonder if ignoring the altimeter setting from PE controllers may cause any problem, or not.

[zerofay32]

The way I handle altimeter differences is to fly the simulator altimeter. This will output the correct altitude to the controllers and will ensure that you altitude is correct on instrument approaches. During takeoff or enroute flight the altimeter dosn't need to be super accurate.

Remember that 1 inch of mercury equals 1000 feet. 0.1 inch equals 100 feet. So if the settings between sim (say 29.92) and myflightroute/RW (say 29.90) are small (0.02") then the altitude difference is not that important (20 ft in this example).