welcome back everyone in today's video I'm going to be giving you a complete detailed breakdown of aviation weather reports Aviation reports include weather reports pilot reports safety reports these reports help pilots and air traffic control as well as the public to make informed decisions about air travel and you're going to need to know this information if you want to pass the FAA part 107 exam and there are three primary types of Aviation reports that you need to focus on and we're going to get into this right now so let me give you a brief overview before we actually start getting into the detailed objectives but you'll need to start taking notes now for the FAA part 107 exam there are three primary types of Aviation reports that you need to focus on the first is called a mear report and mear stands for meteorological Aerodrome report the purpose of this report is to provide current routine weather observations at airp reports these Metar reports are issued hourly or as needed and they contain wind visibility Sky conditions temperature dupoint alternator settings all significant weather readings for anyone who's involved in aviation and after we finish discussing the three types which are the most prominent on this exam we're going to get into actually decoding each and every one of these so that way you'll know exactly how to pass this part 107 exam now the next type of report is called a Taff report report this stands for terminal Aerodrome forecast and the purpose of this report is to provide weather forecasts for specific airports these Taff reports are issued every 6 hours covering a 24 or 30-hour forecast period and the content of these reports are predictions for wind visibility weather conditions Sky conditions and also any significant weather changes and the third type of report is called a pyup these are pilot weather reports and basically the pilots generate this report while they're in flight and they communicate the weather conditions that they're experiencing to air traffic control these reports are realtime weather reports for pilots in flight there's no specific time because they're issued as the pilots report them and the content of this report could be anything from turbulence icing Cloud tops visibility weather conditions that are not always detectable by groundbased systems for the part 107 exam Metar and halfs will be the primary focus but it's good to understand the basic informations of py because it gives you a level of diversity there's also another report that I'll mention briefly called ay report but this report is actually a special type of Meto report and we'll discuss that later now let's go to the first objective and that is to decode a mear report and as you can see on screen I just put an example of a mear report and it looks really confusing doesn't it and it can be quite challenging but by the end of this section this will no longer be foreign to you you will understand every single code in this mear report the first group of code you see this is the report type so the type of report that you're currently looking at says mear but it can also be spey so I'm going to clarify both a Metar report is a routine observation of current weather conditions at an airport or weather station now notice I said routine observation and I bet you you wouldn't even ask me what that means but I'm going to tell you when I said routine observation I was referring to the fact that a mea report provides a snapshot of the current weather conditions at a specific time it's updated regularly every hour and the report that you're looking at right now is basically a snapshot and we'll get into actually when this observation was taken in just a few now if the report type says spey well that is a special weather report it's just like a mear but it's issued whenever there's a significant or sudden change in weather conditions that could affect Aviation safety and you've already figured out that this is not an hourly report this is an anytime report so while metars are routine hourly reports species are unscheduled and can be issued at any time whenever the weather conditions meet a certain criteria and to break it down even more a certain criteria could mean a sudden shift in wind direction or visibility decreases below or could improve above critical thresholds such as all of a sudden going from three statute miles visibility to just a half a mile statute visibility you got to be kidding me this is why I'm making it clear you need to pass the exam with Clarity a mear report is hourly a spey report is suddenly the code just to the right of mear is What's called the station identifier and they tell you that's what it's called but they don't tell you the details the station identifier is where this observation was taken the four letters that you see is what is called an iao code and it stands for a specific airport or weather station iao Code system is used worldwide in aviation and if the letter in the beginning starts with a letter K that means that the K is a prefix of an airport located in the contiguous United States the station identifier on this mear report is katl that means that this mear observation report or snapshot was taken at Hartford Jackson Atlanta International Airport and our would be remiss in this video not to mention two other big airports in the United States Los Angeles International Airport and John F Kennedy International Airport notice that the iao code for all start with the letter K and you already know what that means moving to the right to decode the date and time in UTC now let me explain this the purpose of this bit of information is to provide you with the date and time the observation or snapshot was made and notice that there is a z at the end and that means that this is in Universal time or also known as Zulu time now let's dissect it so you can see exactly what's inside the first two numbers 12 means that it's the 12th day of this month the second two numbers 17 is 1700 hours military time that's 5:00 p.m. the third number 55 means that it's 55 minutes so that's 1755 equal 555 p.m the letter Z pronounced Zulu is a military and Aviation designation referenced to the zero time zone which is located at the Prime Meridian at 0° longitude we'll be discussing latitude and longitude in the next video I promise Zulu time is simply another name for coordinated universal time or UTC and just to go a little deeper just so you know UTC is the standard time used globally and unlike regular time zones UTC never changes and there is no daylight savings time and I probably just inspired a question why is it that they just don't put UTC at the end instead of Z well I can answer that question Z is referenced to zero time primeridian and with International and Military phonetics the letter Z stands for Zulu now let's decode the next Group which has to do with the information about wind and the primary purpose on this group of coded letters and numbers is wind direction and wind speed and the first three numbers that you'll see will always be the wind direction by degrees so as you can see on this mear report the wind direction is 80° true but what I just said to you is absolutely useless because you've heard that before but you still don't really understand it let me challenge you by asking a question before I explain this at 180° true what is the direction of the wind and I know a lot of you just paused in silence thinking I don't have a clue well I'm going to tell you with mear reports the direction of the wind in degrees will always be where the wind is coming from so I already know that 0° is North 90° is East 180° is South 270° is West that means on this report 180° means the wind is coming from the south and everything must have just clicked in your head by the way I explained that it will always be where the wind is coming from now this is very different when we're talking about degrees and Airport runways you're going to see later in the videos that the degrees determine the direction the airplane is flying and not necessarily where the airplane is coming from that'll be another video the next two numbers that you see will be the speed associated with the wind in knots not miles hour and you notice that there's a letter G after the 15 what that means is that the wind is blowing steady at 15 knots and that there are wind gusts reaching up to 25 knots now going back to the wind direction at 180 knots did you notice that I put the word true after it I know the question you're asking what does true mean now this is a key takeaway for the part 107 exam weather report s Metar Taff will always have degrees in true now off topic just for a moment runways compasses and drone headings will always have degrees as magnetic headings so the next question coming is going to be what is the difference between degrees as true versus degrees as magnetic boy and I'm the hardest working man on YouTube right now go ahead hit that subscribe button and I'll tell you true headings means that your reference point is geographical such as a physical location such as the North Pole this is called True North sometimes you'll hear Sailors on boats saying hey my heading is 270 true and that's providing directional information that does not change on the other hand magnetic headings have a reference point of magnetic north which is influenced by the Earth's magnetic fields and this shifts over time so true north is consistent based on geographical location and magnetic north is inconsistent based on the Earth's magnetic fields shifting slightly from time to time now I don't know how I got all of that out without even taking a breath let's move to the next one this section of the Meto report has to do with visibility now I don't think I need to go in depth with this one you've already watched my other videos and you know that SM stands for statute miles so the indication here on this mear report is that the visibility is 10 statur miles now I just went to aviationweather.gov and pulled up a current snapshot observation Metar report from katl you know that airport Atlanta International and you were thinking you were just going to walk away from the visibility field without me explaining everything to you no way visibility on mear reports that have less than 10 statute miles may have what's called modifiers and you're looking at them right now notice one statured mile minus DZ modifier BR modifier what does all of this mean well let me explain these visual modifiers are used fairly frequently in mear reports especially in airport locations where the weather conditions can change rapidly or where adverse conditions such as fog Heavy Rain are common such as in San Francisco and if we decode this visual modifier you'll see that this mear report says one statute mile minus DZ means light drizzle and BR means Mist I'm giving you all of this information because I don't want you to think that the only thing you're going to see on a Metar report in regards to visibility is 10 statute miles now I will give you a list of all of the modifiers it will be in the video description if you like you can go check it out and very quickly I just want to say thank you to all of you who are supporting this Channel with your comments and your subscriptions let's go to the next one this coded group that you're looking at right now has to do with weather conditions so let's go ahead and decode it and just so you know this section of the mear report primarily has to do with clouds and I know you're trying to figure this thing out already but I'm going to throw something up on the screen right now to make it easy for you so you stop scratching that head bam and look at that you see that feew stands for few clouds and all of the other codes are there for the first three letters of this section so you can just use this to decode any Metar report and now we can move on to decode the last three numbers of this section and I'm referring to 020 which is being used to indicate the altitude at the base of the cloud cover measured in AGL so simply put add two zeros and then you'll come up with 2,000 ft AGL and you can see that there are some other examples that I've given you just so you have this crystal clear in your head so this section of the mear report says that there are a few clouds with the base altitude at 2,000 ft AGL now let's move to the next group and did you notice that if I'm pointing to the next group you see that something is familiar bkn stands for broken and I put the chart up again so you'll be able to see that this is also having to do with clouds now question why would they have two separate section specifically for clouds hm and you know something there's a possibility that it could be three or four are you starting to pick up on something here this Metar report shows that there are different clouds that are broken at a different altitude that means that there are multiple layers of clouds and this is very helpful for pilots and drone operators to understand the vertical nature of the atmosphere it forms an intuitively visual impression in your head about what the sky actually actually looks like and that's why you will see multiple Cloud layers on this type of report now the next two coded numbers you're going to see are 18 and 12 these numbers have to do with temperature and dupoint and I hope you had a chance to check out my last video because I explained this in detail now just in case you didn't know 18° for the temperature is in Celsius and 12° for the dupoint is also in Celsius Celsius is used because this is an international standard for aviation weather reports it's set by the international civil aviation organization to ensure consistency worldwide so if you see a multiple choice question on the exam for temperature and dupoint in Fahrenheit you better believe that that answer is not going to be correct because it's only measured in Celsius now I want to ask a question to see how many of you have been digging deep to pass this part 107 exam if the temperature and the dupoint were exactly the same temperature in Celsius what would be the results of the weather conditions now for those of you who know the answer I applaud you for those of you who don't I still applaud you but I'm going to tell you what the answer is when the temperature and the dupoint are the same the air is fully saturated with moisture meaning the relative humidity is at 100% this condition is critical because it leads to fog Mist de cloud formations and even precipitation now another important question is why would this information even matter for a remote pilot well I can give you a clear and concise answer when the temperature and the dupoint are the same visibility will be drastically reduced so that way you'll be violating part 107 requirement to have three statured miles of visibility now let's move to the next section you see I'm pointing to a292 this is the altimeter setting and you're probably asking what is the altimeter setting well let me explain on board every aircraft is a little gauge called an altimeter what this altimeter does is that it measures the altitude by sensing air pressure and Pilots rely on on this little gauge to measure altitude but here's the thing how can you measure something accurately if you don't have an accurate reference or Source well this mear report provides Pilots with an accurate reference so that way they can calibrate the altimeters for accurate readings the a that you're seeing stands for altimeter and the 2992 stands for 29.9 in HG standard atmospheric pressure at sea level and in case you're wondering inhg stands for inches of mercury which is a unit used to measure atmospheric pressure this observation report or snapshot is the measurement of the atmospheric pressure at sea level at this time let's move to the next one do you see RMK to the right of the altimeter setting well what does that mean well RMK on a mear report stands for remarks and this is an optional section that provides additional information about whether in regard to what has not been covered on the standard report RMK provid provides a clearer picture of current conditions especially if the weather is rapidly changing now you've just noticed that I put a Metar report from John F Kennedy International Airport on screen and if you scan over you will also see the remarks but there are some additional codes that are following those remarks we're going to figure out what those are right now AO stands for automated observation with no human and the number two is a station that can detect precipitation such as rain or snow PK wnd d stands for peak wind and on a Meo report this indicates the strongest or highest wind speed recorded since the last routine observation R ab45 this means that the rain began at 45 minutes past the hour SLP 1110 this is the sea level pressure reported in hecto pascals I am not going to get into that on this video and the last one that you see can be somewhat helpful you see that it is giving you the exact temperature and dueo with an 8 18.3 and that point may make a significant difference somewhere I don't know where but anyway that's what it is there are so many more codes that need to be decoded and so much more to learn about mear reports that I just can't cover it on this one video but what I will do is for those of you who really want to go deeper send me a comment and I will make sure that I answer your comments in detail okay I promise you that also the next video that's coming next week is a 1our long video and I promise you you do not want to miss this if you're thinking about passing the part 107 exam every single thing that you need to know will be on that video so stay tuned to this channel to get the update on the upload until then good luck on your part 107 exam see you on the next one