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METAR integration...

Posted: 17 Nov 2013, 12:55
by EI4HQ
Hi,

As the weather is something that hams seem to mention alot in QSOs perhaps it would be nice to have the latest weather data conveniently available within Log4OM e.g. the latest METAR for a nearby airport (location user configurable or determined automatically based on QRL?). It could be provided via the status bar or another tab or something. FLDigi provides a feature to download the latest weather from a METAR (in the case of FLDigi it's done to enable automatic drop in the latest weather into macros for data transmissions). It's a convenient bit of info to have to hand... :idea:

Re: METAR integration...

Posted: 18 Nov 2013, 08:54
by IW3HMH
heheheeh :) i'm an aviation enthusiast and i should say that i like this idea :D
I know also METAR format (i've worked on that when i was in the software development team of IVAO International Virtual Aviation Organization), but the main issue is finding the right airport to show...
If user knows ICAO code i can get the METAR informations, but without i need a suitable "database" where to find airports by location...

Re: METAR integration...

Posted: 18 Nov 2013, 09:10
by G4POP
You could probably link to METARSWeather software which is also free to read their data text file

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mweather.html

Re: METAR integration...

Posted: 18 Nov 2013, 09:26
by G4POP
That said I would much prefer the current solar data to be recorded with each QSO for us geeks that watch solar trends affect on propagation.

Solar data is readily available for auto download from NOAA

Perhaps when we get Winkeyer support I could see a requirement to link METARS data to a CW macro?

Re: METAR integration...

Posted: 18 Nov 2013, 09:52
by G4POP
METARS Airport list in txt file can be found here

http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/surface/stations.txt

Re: METAR integration...

Posted: 19 Nov 2013, 19:00
by EI4HQ
Terry et al,

The current solar propagation information is a biggie with me too - I hadn't suggseted it (yet) as I was still working my way through Log4OM and wasn't certain it wasn't already provided...

What would be the icing on the cake would be a feature capable of retrospectively inserting the solar data for all prior QSOs as well... I expect historic solar flux data is available online in a machine readable format somewhere :?:

Re: METAR integration...

Posted: 19 Nov 2013, 21:59
by G4POP
Cormac,

Find us the historical data and it can be matched by date to log entries but the next question is how far back to go so I can't see that being done.

Current live solar data is easily handled however and I consider that far more important than METARS info