rob (11/08/82)
"How to Improve Your Flying a Byte at a Time", Aviation Consumer, Riverside, Conn., November 1, 1982, pp 5 - 12, Ken Thomas. The article tells about 4 Services, primarily concentrating on Weather Services International, Bedford, Mass. (617-275-5300), and Compuserve Inc., Columbus, Ohio (614-457-8600). WSI costs $1 per minute and Com- puserve is $5 per hour. So, concentrating on Compuserve, You can dial up via modem and access the NOAA weather. All services are available such as hourly reports, terminal forcasts, winds aloft, PIREPS, NOTAMS, SIGMETS and radar summaries. Also available on Compuserve under the menu "Services for professionals" are EMI Flight Plans. You pay $1 per flight plan (in addition to the hourly charge) and run the program. After being prompted for the ident of the destination and origin, TAS, Altitude, you get a print-out of ETE, destination elevation, distance, VOR to VOR flight log, VOR freq- uencies and idents, TO and FROM magnetic courses, en-route leg times. Finally the current weather and forcasts for origin and destination and the time printed. All this was obtained from the article. I'd like to see an article from a compuserve user after it has been tried. Their "prime time" fee is $17.50 rather than $5/hour, but still a lot better than $60 per hour. Rob Wood (decvax!genradbolton!rob)