Weather on Pilot EFB Desk is a workbench: a stations rail on the left that is also the watch-list manager, and a wide pane that reads as a briefing board when nothing is selected and as one station's readout when something is. Raw text comes first everywhere, the decode sits beside it, and every report names its source and fetch time. The line at the foot of every weather screen, "Reference only - verify officially.", is the module's standing framing: this is a personal reference, not an aviation weather briefing service.
Find your way around
The rail on the left is the watch-list. Its header reads STATIONS with a
tape under it counting the board - 6 STN · 6 VMC, with an IMC or UNKNOWN
count when there is one - and a cluster of controls:
| Rail control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Board (grid icon) | Open the briefing board - the landing view when no station is selected |
| Compare | Compare airports side by side |
| Refresh | Refresh weather for every station on the rail |
| + | Add a station, watch a FIR, or create a group |
| Edit | Edit the board - reorder or remove (shown only when you have something to manage) |
Below the header the rail is sectioned. Flight route holds the stations of your active flight folder with their roles (DEP, DEST, ALTN 1 and so on) and says "From brief" - you cannot edit it here. Watch-list is your own loose stations. Groups lists each group with its member count and the worst member category, and FIR NOTAMs lists the FIRs you watch for enroute NOTAMs. Every station card carries the ICAO and IATA codes, the airport name, the observation age, a VMC or IMC chip, and a one-line readout of wind, visibility and ceiling. A station with no report says which: NO DATA, NOT FETCHED, RAW ONLY or FAILED. "How the workbench works" at the foot of the rail opens the in-app guide.
The wide pane is the Briefing board when nothing is selected. Its masthead carries the station count, a VMC/IMC tally, the Cards and List switch, the auto-refresh control, and the Compare, Display and Arrange controls.
How to add a station
- In the rail header, press +. The add panel opens in the wide pane with three modes across the top: Station, FIR NOTAMs and Group.
- On Station, type in the Search airport - e.g. EGLL, London, KSFO field. Results list below, with your saved and recent airports above them.
- On the Adds to row, pick where the station lands: Watch-list, or one of your groups. The group you had open when you pressed + is preselected.
- Press the airport in the results. Enter adds the top result. An add into a group confirms in words - "EGLL added to Domestic." - with an Open group action; an add to the watch-list appears on the rail straight away.
- Press Done when you have finished.
How to create a group
- Press + in the rail header and switch the panel to Group.
- Name it in the Group name - e.g. UK, Winter alternates field.
- Tick the stations to file in it from the checklist of your rail's stations. Select all and Clear work the whole list, and the count reads "n / total".
- Press Create group with 3 stations (the button counts what you ticked; with nothing ticked it reads Create group).
The workbench opens the new group so its member cards are the confirmation. Open a group from the rail to rename it, or reorder and remove its stations, with its own Edit and Done.
How to reorder or remove stations
- Press Edit in the rail header. An accent band reads "Editing the board" and every manageable row shows a grip, up and down arrows and a remove control.
- Drag a strip by its grip to reorder it, or Tab to the grip and press the arrow keys. The order on screen is the order that commits.
- Press remove on a station to take it off the watch-list. Removing a group or a watched FIR asks you to confirm first.
- Press Done.
The Flight route section never enters edit mode: its stations come from the active flight folder. To give the readout the whole width, press the handle on the divider between rail and pane ("Hide watch-list"); press it again ("Show watch-list") to bring the rail back.
How to read the briefing board
- With no station selected, the wide pane is the board. Read the masthead tally first: only decoded reports count toward VMC and IMC, and stale, loading, failed and not-fetched stations sit in their own buckets.
- If any station is IMC, a READ FIRST doorway names the most restrictive one on the board. Click it to open that station.
- Switch between Cards and List. Cards carry a WIND, VIS, CEIL, T/DP
and QNH band, the condition line, the observation stamp as
Obs 1150Z · 6m ago, and the source and fetch time. List is one dense row per station with the same columns. Your choice persists in this browser. - Press the pin on a card to pin it - pinned stations sort first on the board and are what the ops display shows. Press the unfold control to open a station's full METAR and TAF panel above the grid, side by side with any others you have unfolded.
- Press Arrange to drag cards into your own order, or use the arrow keys on a card's grip; press Done to finish. The order syncs with your account.
How to read a station
- Click a card on the rail or the board. The station header reads the ICAO code, its IATA tag and category chip, the airport name and country, the Source and Fetched wells with the observation age beside them, a Compare button, a refresh control, and the Field local clock.
- Stay on Now & Forecast (the other tab is Weather Charts).
- Read the METAR · DECODED card on the left: the raw report first, in monospace and labelled with its source ("Raw METAR · SADIS (UK Met Office)"), then the decoded cells for wind, visibility, weather, cloud, temperature and dewpoint, and QNH. A trend chip beside the age reads Improving, Steady or Worsening, and a line under the cells notes when the TAF currently reads a different category from the observation.
- Read the Detail panel under it: the observation time in Zulu and field local, the fetch time, the flight rules in full, then Conditions, Sky, and Temperature and pressure rows, each decoded to what the code said and nothing more - "No clouds detected" and "None reported" are decodes too.
- Read the Forecast panel on the right. The validity pill grades the window, not the issue age: "Valid for 25h 13m", "Expires in 40m", "In force in 40m" or "Expired 2h ago - refresh for current TAF". The ribbon under it is a time ruler: a Prevailing lane of category-coloured segments, a TEMPO/PROB lane for the caveats, and a Now line. Move the pointer along the ruler and a hairline drops at that instant with the Zulu stamp, the category and any TEMPO or PROB caveat in force; move away and it clears. Tab to the ruler and the arrow keys step 30 minutes (Shift for 3 hours), Home and End jump to the window bounds, and Escape clears. An instant no group covers reads "No persistent group" rather than borrowing a neighbour.
- Click a segment on the ribbon to scroll to that period's full decode below the raw TAF: the BASE period, then each BECMG, TEMPO and PROB group with its wind, visibility, cloud and weather cells.
How to go beyond the readout
The row of links at the foot of the station readout opens the station's other pages. Each carries the same weather footer and its own refresh button.
| Link | What it opens |
|---|---|
| Winds aloft | Forecast wind and temperature by altitude, with the raw FD or model bulletin and a freezing-level estimate marked as an estimate |
| METAR history | The station archive filtered to METARs: a month calendar, a day timeline and a Jump to time panel over the 30-day on-device archive, with deep history from IEM when connected |
| TAF history | The same archive filtered to TAFs |
| Weather Charts tab | The charts console: a hazard status strip (NEAREST, NEXT CHANGE, UPDATED), a full-bleed chart and a docked hazard list, with a switcher for the Hazards, SIGWX, Upper Air, The Sky and Advisories families |
| FIR row on the rail | The FIR's enroute NOTAMs - a NOTAM surface, so it carries the NOTAM footer instead |
The archive page ends in a Station history panel headed "History, not a forecast": flight-category hours over the last 7 days (IFR or worse, MVFR, LIFR and Not covered) and 30 days of NOTAM history, computed from this device's own archive and stamped with when it was computed. It fills in as you open stations; a station you have never opened has nothing to show, and says so.
How to compare airports
- Press Compare in the rail header, in the board masthead or on a station header. The page opens at Weather / Compare as Airport comparison.
- Build the set under Compared airports: the page seeds from your pinned
stations, your watched board or a group, and the REPLACE WITH row
swaps in another list. Type a code or name in Add an airport - code or
name and press Enter to add the first match. Two to eight airports; the
counter reads
6 / 8. - Drag a card to reorder the columns, or Tab to its grip and use the arrow keys. The X on a card removes it.
- Read the Side by side table: airports as columns in your order, facts as rows - Airport, Category, Observed, Ceiling, Visibility, Wind, QNH, TAF outlook, Local time, Sunrise and Sunset in UTC, Elevation, Longest runway (open), Runways (open), Field NOTAMs, Your note and Official AIP. Switch UNITS between ft and m for the length rows.
- Press Refresh to fetch every column again.
The table is descriptive only: there is no ranking, no recommended column and no sorting. A cell with nothing to show says why - "No METAR", "No TAF", "Not fetched", "Fetch failed" or "Not in bundled data" - and the Field NOTAMs row is a count with a link, never an all-clear. The band at the foot names every provider and the oldest fetch instant in the table.
How to put the board on a wall
- Press Display in the board masthead. The Ops display opens chromeless: no sidebar, no top bar, a poster-sized Zulu clock, and one poster-tier card per station with the WIND, VIS and CEIL figures, QNH and T/DP, the raw METAR, a TAF band with the worst forecast category and when it starts, the station's NOTAM lanes, and a Source and Fetched line.
- The display shows your pinned stations in their board order; the subtitle says so ("4 pinned stations"). With nothing pinned it shows your home base and favourites and says "nothing pinned - showing home + favourites". Press Add in the station strip to add a station by code or name, or the X on a chip to remove one.
- Press the auto-refresh control to set the cadence; the masthead reads "Auto-refresh every 15m · next in 7m" and "Last refreshed 11:57Z".
- Press the fullscreen control to take the whole screen. Escape exits fullscreen, and the exit control leaves the display; Cmd+K (Ctrl+K on Windows) still works from it.
How auto-refresh works
The board's auto-refresh control cycles through off, every 15 minutes, every 30 and every 60, and reads its state in words: "Auto-refresh off" or "Auto-refresh every 15m · next in 7m". It is the same Weather auto-refresh setting the iOS app keeps. On the board and the readout a cycle fires only while the Weather page is in front, the tab is visible and the window is focused; the ops display drops the focus rule, because a wall monitor is expected to be visible but unfocused, and a hidden tab never polls. A refresh anywhere - the rail, a card, the display, a cadence fire - reaches a pop-out window within a moment, and a failed cycle shows an amber banner over cards that keep their truthful ages.
On iPhone and iPad
The watch-list, groups, FIRs, the raw-first METAR and TAF readouts, the archives, winds aloft and the charts are the same on the phone, reached from the Brief tab's Stations mode, and your stations and groups sync between the two. The briefing board with its pins and arrangement, the comparison table, the ops display and pop-out windows are Desk only. See Weather on iPhone.
Troubleshooting
A card reads "Not fetched". The board fetches live weather for up to 50 stations; anything beyond that loads when you open it. Rail rows above group members in the fetch order, so a visible strip is never dropped for a hidden member.
The TAF ribbon has no knob to drag. It is not a scrubber: point anywhere along the ruler for the read at that instant, or Tab to it and use the arrow keys. Nothing is parked, so nothing can be left in the wrong place.
The validity pill is red but the age chip is green. They grade different things: the age chip counts from the observation time, the pill from the TAF's validity window. "Expired - refresh for current TAF" means the window has ended; press refresh.
Compare opens with no airports. The set seeds from your pins, your watched board or a group. Pin a station or two on the board, or use the REPLACE WITH row, then add the rest by code or name.
The ops display shows my home base, not my pins. Nothing is pinned. The subtitle says so; pin stations on the board, or add them on the display's own station strip.
The pop-out window says "Source lost". The app tab has not been heard from. Bring the app tab back, or press Reconnect in the window's band; the station ages shown stay accurate meanwhile.
Auto-refresh is on but nothing is refreshing. On the board it only fires while the Weather page is in front, the tab is visible and the window is focused. Use the ops display for an unfocused monitor.
Where next
- NOTAMs - the triage table across the same stations, with the FIR rows from this rail.
- Flight Brief - the flight folder that puts a Flight route section on the rail.
- Watch - your own thresholds on the same stations, and the watch wall variant of the display.
- Ops Map - the same weather as layers on the chart.