METAR notation as a foreign language. Was: Iowa Aviation Weather...en Espanol

"Jay Honeck" wrote:
Does anyone else find it disturbing that the National Weather Service
in the United States is paying out taxpayer money to a government
employee to create a foreign-language web page?

You only now noticed aviation weather reports from the U.S. government in a
foreign language!? This isn't the first time U.S. taxpayer money has been
spent on delivering weather reports in anything other than English:

Because lets face it, METAR code is a foreign language which originated
from aliens from a another planet bent on world on domination - and I want
to know when the people of the earth are going to rise up in arms and throw
off the alien oppression so we can read weather reports in our native
languages?

:-)

On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 11:10:03 -0800, Jim Logajan wrote
(in article ):

"Jay Honeck" wrote:
Does anyone else find it disturbing that the National Weather Service
in the United States is paying out taxpayer money to a government
employee to create a foreign-language web page?

You only now noticed aviation weather reports from the U.S. government in a
foreign language!? This isn't the first time U.S. taxpayer money has been
spent on delivering weather reports in anything other than English:

Because lets face it, METAR code is a foreign language which originated
from aliens from a another planet bent on world on domination - and I want
to know when the people of the earth are going to rise up in arms and throw
off the alien oppression so we can read weather reports in our native
languages?

-)

Actually, much of it originated in French. That is how we get BR = "Mist."

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

Because lets face it, METAR code is a foreign language which originated
from aliens from a another planet

For sure!

What I find hilarious is when the FAA says they use these
abbreviations because of "limited computer capacity"...

We actually had an FAA geek state that at a Safety Seminar a few years
ago. Even then, before the days of 400 gigabyte PC hard drives, the
room erupted in laughter.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
Because lets face it, METAR code is a foreign language which originated
from aliens from a another planet

For sure!

What I find hilarious is when the FAA says they use these
abbreviations because of "limited computer capacity"...

We actually had an FAA geek state that at a Safety Seminar a few years
ago. Even then, before the days of 400 gigabyte PC hard drives, the
room erupted in laughter.

If only they WERE using 400GB PC's instead of the vacuum tubed, 1970's
models relics they do :~)

I'm amazed the FAA does ATC in real-time, rather than as an overnight batch
process.

On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:37:58 -0800, Jay Honeck wrote
(in article . com):

Because lets face it, METAR code is a foreign language which originated
from aliens from a another planet

For sure!

What I find hilarious is when the FAA says they use these
abbreviations because of "limited computer capacity"...

Originally, it was limited bandwidth. The system was developed for ancient
Teletype machines working at 400 baud. That is no excuse for not fixing it,
of course, and you can now get plain language weather reports if you want
them. But they can't get rid of the old ones because too many of us
old-timers find reading the abbreviations is actually faster. So, they have
to keep the decrepit old system around as long as there are decrepit old
flyers. :-)

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:13:15 -0800, C J Campbell
wrote:


Originally, it was limited bandwidth.

If they want to reduce bandwidth requirements why not eliminate all
the boiler plate in the TFR announcements so you can actually find the
restricted area, altitude, and time. Now when I try to read them I am
faced with a solid block meaningless text that requires multiple
screens to get through.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
Because lets face it, METAR code is a foreign language which originated
from aliens from a another planet

For sure!

What I find hilarious is when the FAA says they use these
abbreviations because of "limited computer capacity"...

We actually had an FAA geek state that at a Safety Seminar a few years
ago. Even then, before the days of 400 gigabyte PC hard drives, the
room erupted in laughter.

Teletypes are slow and limited in what they could do. Context is everything.

Jay Honeck schrieb:


We actually had an FAA geek state that at a Safety Seminar a few years
ago. Even then, before the days of 400 gigabyte PC hard drives, the
room erupted in laughter.


Yeah, this type of ignorance can be seen all the time. And not only in
computing.

#m
--
I am not a terrorist http://www.casualdisobedience.com/

On 2007-02-15, Jay Honeck wrote:
Because lets face it, METAR code is a foreign language which originated
from aliens from a another planet

For sure!

What I find hilarious is when the FAA says they use these
abbreviations because of "limited computer capacity"...

'Limited computer capacity' is nothing to do with hard disk space. A
consistent set of abbreviations used worldwide vastly simplifies the job
of making all the weather computers talk to each other. If each computer
in each country simply used natural language for METARs, gathering all
the observations for the weather models would become an utter nightmare.
You'd have thousands of conditions in code - translating French words
for weather, translating British English, American English, Spanish -
the code would quickly become a complex unmaintainable mess.

If you want METARs in natural language, well, thanks to the consistent
set of abbreviations that is standardized, it is trivial to have a
computer translate it into your first language and own timezone. That's
a FAR better solution than having the raw METAR data in plain English
and then having the computer translate natural language into something
it can put into the models. You don't have to ever read a raw METAR if
you don't want to. Even ancient telnet DUATS will translate raw METAR
into English and your local timezone.

Your hilarity is merely caused by lack of knowledge in this case.

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

On 2007-02-15, C J Campbell wrote:
Originally, it was limited bandwidth. The system was developed for ancient
Teletype machines working at 400 baud. That is no excuse for not fixing it,
of course, and you can now get plain language weather reports if you want
them. But they can't get rid of the old ones because too many of us
old-timers find reading the abbreviations is actually faster. So, they have
to keep the decrepit old system around as long as there are decrepit old
flyers. :-)

Well, that and everyone in the world (and every weather station) would
need to change all at the same time to remain compatible, or at least
have lots of 'workaround' code to cope with two incompatible systems!

There's really no need for anyone to read raw METAR if they don't want
to.

However, it is useful to do so. Notwithstanding that GPRS has plenty of
bandwidth for 'text only' applications, a raw undecoded TAF for even the
filthiest weather forecast will fit on one screen on my cell phone. This
is extremely convenient (especially since my home airfield is a farm
airfield and doesn't have electricity, let alone a computer - but
there's a cell tower about 1/4 mile away). Even if my cell phone had
4 GBps bandwidth, undecoded TAF would still be much better than plain
language due to the constraint of the screen being so small.

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de