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, the same shared rail the NOTAMs and Airports desks use. Its header row carries the station count and three controls, with the add field directly under it:
| Rail control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Refresh | Refresh weather for every station on the rail |
| Edit / Done | Show a checkbox and a menu button on every card for selecting, moving and removing (E) |
| Organise | The station-by-group grid for the whole board in one dialog |
| Add field | Type an ICAO, IATA, name or city; Enter watches the highlighted hit, Shift+Enter keeps it out of any group; A focuses it from anywhere on the desk |
| Board | In the rail's foot while a station is open - back to the briefing board |
| Compare | In the rail's foot - the airport comparison, seeded from the board |
Below the controls the rail is sectioned: Not in a group first - your loose stations - then each of your groups with its member count in brackets; a header press folds or unfolds the section and your folds are remembered. Every station card is an instrument: a stripe in the flight-category hue, a wind rose (the pointer on the rim marks where the wind blows from, the speed in knots in the centre, the VMC or IMC word beneath; hover it for "Wind from 180° at 8 kt"), the ICAO with its IATA tag and the observation age as a small chip, the airport name, and one line of conditions - "280/13 kt · >= 10 km · NCD" - with the restricting value in the flight-rules ink. A NIL report reads "No data available - station reported NIL"; a report past the red age line loses its category edge and the plate reads Stale. 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; under it a strip of scope tabs - All plus one tab per group - opens a group's own pane.
How to add a station
- Click into the add field under the rail's header, or press A anywhere on the desk.
- Type an ICAO, IATA code, airport name or city. Results list below the field; a hit already watched is listed and inert, and the highlight starts on the first you can add.
- Press Enter, or click the hit. The station lands in Not in a group
unless a group is the target - choose Add stations to
from a group's menu and a strip under the field reads "New stations go to " with an x Stop chip; Shift+Enter always adds loose. The card appears on the rail straight away and fetches.
A station you opened from elsewhere (the command deck, an airport page, a flight's route) that is neither watched nor in any of your groups sits in a read-only Viewing section on the rail, marked "Not watched", with a Watch this station action.
How to create a group
- Press G, or use the new-group field in the rail's foot, and name the group ("UK", "Winter alternates"). It appears as an empty section.
- File stations into it: drag a card onto the group's header (the header reads Move here, or Copy here with Alt held, and the rows slide apart to show the landing), or tick cards in Edit mode and use Move to or Copy to on the bar that docks, or open a card's menu and tick the group.
- Hover the group's header for its ... menu: Rename (F2 or a
double-click also renames in place), Refresh this group, Open group
for its own pane, Add stations to
and Remove group - stations stay on the board.
Organise in the rail header does all of it at once: the Organise stations dialog is a station-by-group grid of ticks, saved as you go, with a rename on each column header, a remove on each row and its own add field. A station filed nowhere is tagged "No group" there. The board's scope tabs list every group beside All.
How to reorder or remove stations
- Drag a card - at rest, no mode needed - to reorder it within its section, or drop it on another section to move it. The card floats under its shadow and the gap travels with your pointer; Escape puts it back.
- Or press Edit (E) in the rail header. Every card gains a checkbox and a ... menu with Open on the board, Move up and Move down (when its section holds more than one card), the group tick list, New group with EGLL... and Remove EGLL, which asks first; a right-click on any card at rest opens the same menu. Pinning is done on the briefing board, not the rail. Tick cards (Shift-click for a range) for Move to, Copy to and Remove on the docked bar.
- Removing a station takes it off the watch-list and out of every group in one step, with Undo on the toast; removing a group leaves its stations on the board.
- Press Done.
To give the readout the whole width, click the slim tab on the divider between rail and pane ("Hide watch-list"); click 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 card itself to open the station; to read two or more side by side, use Compare.
- Click a scope tab under the masthead - All, or one of your groups - to read that group's stations as their own board; a tab carries a dot only when its worst category is degraded.
- 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. Under it, five recessed wells give the figures you read first - WIND, VIS, CEIL, T/DP and QNH - drawn only from a decoded report. A report older than the red age line drops the category edge and puts a STALE OBSERVATION band across the page: "This report for OIBA was observed 28 Aug 15:00Z (19d ago). It is not the current weather ... Refresh, or verify with official sources."
- Stay on Now & Forecast (the other tab is Weather Charts). Picking another station from the rail always lands on Now & Forecast.
- 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", with "Expired - refresh for current TAF" beside an expired one. The spine under it is a time ruler. A continuous state band runs the whole window, coloured by the category in force at each instant, so a wind-only change never leaves a hole; a BECMG window is drawn as a ramp fading out of the old hue, and inside it the band holds the worse of the old and new readings, element by element, so an improvement shows only from the window's end (hover its mark for "BECMG 14/00Z - 14/02Z / Becoming VRB/03 kt"). Under the band, one lane each for Wind, Visibility, Cloud and Weather, one cell per run of the same reading, the restricting cell tinted in its own hue; an element the forecast never states says so on its lane. Caveat bars carry their group tag (PROB30, TEMPO) and as much of the token line as fits - a piece that does not fit is dropped whole, and the raw TAF sits directly below. Hourly ticks sit on the axis.
- Read the readout strip under the well. At rest it reads the forecast at now - time, prevailing category, the four elements, any caveat with its tokens; move the pointer along the ruler, or Tab to it and step with the arrow keys (30 minutes, Shift for 3 hours; Home and End jump to the window bounds), and it reads that instant instead. Inside a BECMG window it says "Becoming ..."; an instant no group covers reads "No persistent group" rather than borrowing a neighbour.
- Click a segment on the spine 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. A tapped hazard pill on the map opens a card that says what its tier word means (WARNING, WATCH, ADVISORY, cited), lists the bulletin's product, issuer, altitude band, movement and validity end, and Show in list opens that row in the dock. While a product loads the card shows a ghost of its settled shape, never a spinner. When a hazard source fails or an entry cannot be decoded, the strip and the dock say so ("1 source failed (...), list may be incomplete") instead of reading as a quiet sky |
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 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. The dashed card at the end of the strip is the
next column ("Column 7 of 8"): type a code or name into it and press
Enter to add the first match. Two to eight airports; the counter reads
6 / 8, and a full comparison's slot reads "Full - max 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 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, 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 phone's Stations mode also keeps its FIR cards, which the desk moves to the NOTAMs page. 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, and the desk that watches your FIRs.
- Flight Brief - the flight folder that briefs a route's weather around your day.
- 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.