Low hour, VFR only, PPL here.
Say you want to travel from Maia (north Portugal) to Castellon (East Spain) in a couple of days from now:
The aircraft is a PA28 180.
My problem is that the metar/taf stations along the way are few and mostly far from my route. It’s quite hard to get a good picture how the weather is. Obviously before departing I can have a quick look at a sat image, but it’s still won’t tell me how high the clouds are.
Right now sat24 forcast show there might be some cloud cover but no rain:
I tried playing with gramet (for the first time) and this is the output. According to this it’s gonna be fine. But I don’t really know how reliable this is.
Is there any more accurate way know how high the ceiling will be?
Without having the time to check your route and the mountains on your route I would say …
- Make a FIRST serious check of the weather 3 days before your go. And even three days before your flight it can change
- Best practice (although your passengers can hate you for it) is to make the final decision on the morning of your flight.
- I think: At that time of the year and with the forecast as it is you will not see any low ceilings on this route.
The GRAMET is near-useless for stratus cloud… it usually shows nothing.
The MSLP for 2 days from now looks clean
There are enough airports around there for a TAF+METAR on the morning of the flight.
Probably it will be CAVOK but you never know!
I don’t think there are other wx sources. What does the “Spanish BBC” say?
Never cancel until the morning of the flight.
As said before, check morning of flight. Portugal summer is usually not too bad!
On more off-topic not
Is that CS-AFI you are taking? can’t remember if 160 or 180 hp.
I haven’t been to LPVL in 2 years (last time was flying a DA40 to and from London) (still paying membership though!)
Last i’ve actually been with the club members, the Cub wasn’t operating. Is is a cub or super cub?
I use a website called topmeteo.eu for advance planning. It’s a paid service though. They have hourly sigwx projections, cloud distribution charts etc 5 days into the future. I find them quite reliable but as said above weather outlooks change a lot. It’s much like a helicopter view version of the Gramet. Somehow can’t copy the charts here but the chart for Spain on the 5th looks clean except for some low cloud in the Pays Basque area and a small line of showers over the Mediterranean roughly from Alicante to Barcelona. Neither should affect your flight. Both disappear after 1200z.
Generally I would try to fly as early as possible as thing get quite turbulent over central Spain in the Summer esp at lower levels and there is always a chance of some CB in mountainous areas.
For last minute go/no-go decisions I like the “tops” image you can get from Autorouter using telegram.
Thanks Guys. I will make the final decision on the morning of course.
Peter, I haven’t lived here long enough to know which are the reliable local met services (Spanish/Portuguese BBC). It’s also the first time I’m doing such a long distance trip.
Hi @Noe! Yes it is CS-AFI I’m taking. It should be a 180… at least that’s what it says on the POH 
LPVL has recently been resurfaced and the tunnel going underneath the runway has finally been re opened. Currently they are resurfacing the bit of runway that goes over the tunnel, so soon the runway is going to be even longer (it’s long enough as it is actually). The skydiving company has started operating again, so now the airfield is a bit more lively, which is quite nice.
I haven’t seen the cub for about a year. I saw it last summer when it was being washed. However was told that it’s not being flown much as club members don’t use it.
geekyflyer wrote:
LPVL has recently been resurfaced and the tunnel going underneath the runway has finally been re opened. Currently they are resurfacing the bit of runway that goes over the tunnel, so soon the runway is going to be even longer (it’s long enough as it is actually). The skydiving company has started operating again, so now the airfield is a bit more lively, which is quite nice.
That’s good news. Quite eager to do another local flight there, especially in the cub (House where I grew up is on the Cavado, between BELOS and ZENDE). If one day I move there i’d be keen to look at getting something with floats :)
The 2 long trips I did which involved portugal were LPVL → Faro, and back, and the one to and from London (via biarritz / la rochelle). I think both times I had an IMC rating, so wasn’t too concerned about weather except on arrival / departure (I’d be willing to find holes through thin Stratus).
In your case, I’d be especially wary of the weather where the mountains are higher, as they are inland and rising air (if you have a tailwing on outbound leg) might cause thunderstorms due to rising hot warm air.
Have you checked https://brief-ng.ipma.pt/?action=newuser&club=#showRegister
TAF + METAR on the day is the very best bet, regardless of every effort at planning before which is only useful as a guide. Short of that if there is a local service the met. provides of a one to one call with a forecaster that can be remarkably helpful. In your early days never second guess the professional forecasters, but do you as many TAFS and METARS especially in the direction the weather is coming from to give you a picture of how it is forecast to develop. It will be as good as you can get.
You could also have a look at Météo France’s TEMSI EUROC (EURope OCcidentale) chart, which is produced about half a day in advance. It covers your route and will show the predicted cloud types, cloud bases and cloud tops as well as predicted significant weather. You can sign up for free here (by choosing a password of at least 8 characters, with at least one uppercase letter and at least one number – like someone is that desparately going to want to hack into my free, read-only account):
https://aviation.meteo.fr/login.php
Example:
