On Jun 12, 5:58 am, George Graham wrote:
On Jun 4, 12:21 pm, "Peter R." wrote:

I was listening to LiveATC.net's feed of Syracuse, NY, yesterday (Sunday)

Thank you Peter, for introducing a neat web goodie!

After listening to the inflight, and reading some posts here, I am
amazed at your point of view.

As I see it, the controller is the dummy with his his head stuck up
his rear. How can you work full time in this business, and not know
what XM is ?

The controller got nervous by looking at his radar, when the pilot
(who said that he was IFR rated) had his window to look out.

Unsafe ? The pilot is using modern technology to overcome a problem
with ATC, they usually don't offer advice, and will let you fly right
into the soup without warning. Anyway, that is how I see it.

In thunderstorms the person looking at a GOOD RADAR has the one
looking outside the window beat by a long shot. I dont know if the
Radar in question is an 11 or a 9...but either would tell a pilot a
lot more about the evolving nature of a line of thunderstorms then one
could hope to see with the Mark 1 eyeball.

I've done this in airplanes low and slow and high and fast. There is
nothing right now that beats real time radar observation in terms of
seeing how things are evolving along a line of thunderstorms.

this is even more so down low and slow when one is perhaps limited in
vision by 1) other cloud layers and 2) where options can disapear
quickly.

The controllers are in a difficult situation here. AS AOPA pilot has
detailed there have been some cases where controllers gave nothing
much more then the "Hazardous weather" information and some light
planes were either bent or smashed by the WX and then there have been
some examples of where the controller more or less ended up making ALL
the WX decisions for the pilot.

I just breezed over the transcripts, but I dont get the sense from
reading them that the pilot was very aware of the limitations of the
XM or that the pilot had a really good picture of the wx...

Back in the days before EFIS but with color/solid state/memory radars
one of my "fun" things to do on penetrating "lines" in the Boeing was
to ask my first officer, particulary when he/she was the flying pilot
for that leg...I would hold out athe appropriate chart and say "where
on the chart do you think that line stretches from?"

I was mostly always surprised at the answers.

As it stands right now (and this has not always been true) ATC radar
particularly TRACON radar is very good wx radar. USE IT.

Robert