Teacherjh wrote:

The FSS can do this for me, and it is not just shifting my work to them
because they have done it a hundred times for a hundred different pilots
that morning. They already have a good idea what's in those reports, I do
not (having just
gotten them for the first time). So, I much prefer that FSS pick out the
relevant stations and tell me what's in them.

No, it's not shifting your work to them. You do your work anyway.

I do pretty much what you do: I do everyone via computer on my own, and I
then call FSS as "backup". They might know of something I've missed or
that wasn't available to me, for example.

But what some people may forget during these threads is that FSS is also
available in-flight...where many of us don't have Internet access.
Recently, for example, I'd made a last-minute decision to flight the Hudson
VFR corridor instead of my preplanned route north. But what about possible
TRFs?

A quick call to FSS answered my question (in the negative, happily).

A while back, I was tootling along the Connecticut coast heading for
Nantucket. All earlier reports were "great weather" at the destination.
But looking down, I saw that the entire coastline was covered in fog. If
Connecticut, why not Nantucket?

Worried, I called FSS. A quick discussion with the briefer confirmed the
weather reports I'd received earlier, and I was also able to learn where
the fog stopped.

I could have accomplished this same thing with uploaded weather, I suppose.
But that still wouldn't have handled the earlier case...and it's a lot
easier to keep up my scan for traffic while talking than while futzing
around with a weather display.

[Why do no aviation electronics use voice recognition yet?]

- Andrew