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Checkride
Weather
Prep
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Copyright © 2013 by Julie Hafen
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, 2013
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Preface
I initially created this book in June 2008 to aid me when teaching the weather charts to
students. There are too many sources available to teach weather reports and charts,
and I found it difficult when teaching because not all the information was in one book; by
the time I got done teaching, my desk was a mess of books, binders, papers, etc. I
wanted an easy to use weather book that would allow me to seamlessly teach this
subject, thus the Weather Prep book was born.
Though some of the weather reports and charts in this book are not listed in every PTS,
I still taught this entire book to every student. My reasoning is, just because a chart is
not listed in the PTS doesn’t mean an examiner will not ask questions about it. When
prepping students for checkrides, I always found it better to over-prepare them than to
under-prepare them. A checkride should be fun, not stressful.
I taught each student using this book only once; the other times I used the Table of
Contents as a guideline and asked my students to find and use the charts online at
aviationweather.gov to tell me about the current weather reports and forecast. I never
had a student struggle with the weather on a checkride!
I made this version with students and instructors in mind. This will be a great benefit
for students prepping for a checkride, but it is also a great teaching tool for instructors.
This book is spiral bound because it is easier to teach and learn from books when they
can stay open themselves. Every aviation study book I bought, I had it spiral bound.
As the charts are updated I will continue to update and release new versions of this
book. However, it is your responsibility to make sure that you stay on top of updates
as well (useful sources to use are aviationweather.gov and faa.gov).
If you find any errors in this book, please email me at trendypilots@gmail.com.
Hope you now enjoy learning and teaching weather as much as I always did!
-Julie Hafen
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Table of Contents:
METAR.......................................................................................................................................1
TAF.............................................................................................................................................. 5
Area Forecast ........................................................................................................................... 11
PIREP........................................................................................................................................... 15
Winds Aloft............................................................................................................................... 23
AWOS/ASOS/ATIS ................................................................................................................. 25
Convective Outlook Chart.................................................................................................... 29
Surface Analysis Chart............................................................................................................ 33
Weather Depiction Chart ..................................................................................................... 37
Radar Summary Chart ............................................................................................................ 39
Surface Prognostic Chart....................................................................................................... 41
Low Level Significant Weather Chart ................................................................................. 45
AIRMETs.................................................................................................................................... 47
SIGMETs/CONVECTIVE SIGMETs ..................................................................................... 51
Preflight Weather Briefings.................................................................................................... 53
Abbreviations and Acronyms............................................................................................... 55
Weather Descriptions............................................................................................................65
Weather Phenomena ..............................................................................................................65
Cloud Types..............................................................................................................................66
Other Abbreviations...............................................................................................................67
Present Weather Symbols and Codes................................................................................ 81