MSP Hint of the Month for August 2012

If you are using the "native" ATC in FSX, you may have noted that you don't get up-to-date weather information from ATC until you get very close to your destination. This is also a problem if you are using Radar Contact for ATC, although it is not so bad. This is annoying, because you need to know the weather at your destination in plenty of time to pick your preferred approach and landing runway and to download the required charts. Of course, you can just let ATC tell you what to do and get the ILS frequency at the last minute for the assigned runway from your GPS or some other source. But, if you like to plan ahead and, particularly if you use Radar Contact or some other ATC and can specify your runway and approach, it's best to know the weather well in advance. If you are using a supplemental weather program, or know how to use the map feature in FSX to get the weather, that will work. But there is another way (here comes the "hint" part). Get the ATIS frequency for your destination and tune that into your Comm. 2 receiver. Then hit the "Both" button on the audio panel. When you get within radio range, the ATIS broadcast from your destination will appear on your audio and/or as a crawler across the top of the screen. This will happen substantially before ATC provides the information and let you confirm or revise the predictions of the weather "briefing" you should have gotten before takeoff. Try it; it works.

Mike