5 ms·
METARs are perpetually down. one funny thing about them, they are deemed to be a critical service which requires something like 99.99% uptime to be in complianc
by gnarbarian 4y ago
METARs are perpetually down. one funny thing about them, they are deemed to be a critical service which requires something like 99.99% uptime to be in compliance with the FAA regulations governing service delivery. to get around this, a METAR is considered up as long as it has power, regardless as to whether it itsproducing data or providing accurate readings.
the technology was certified and frozen in the 90s. many of these devices are running windows 3.1 for networking!
they cost more than 2 million dollars a piece to install (at least around here) and require 4 trips per year to calibrate.
since there was little incentive and herculean constraints for the team in charge of METARs to improve the situation, another team at the FAA decided to create their own non certified version. to be installed in places that can't afford a METAR. They were able to build a better system using the same hardware but updated software for a hardware cost of $80k, 250k installed. this system only needs calibration once every 2 years. so it represents about a 1/10 cost of install and 1/8 cost of maintenance.
naturally this pissed off some people. I'm not going to get into internal politics beyond saying the project is currently frozen until a number of large efforts imposed on the program are completed. I believe it will still eventually come out because the cat is out of the bag and there are many groups desperate for a better alternative.
- binkHN 4y ago> many of these devices are running windows 3.1 for networking! Woah. Really?
- mayormcmatt 4y agoI'm very interested in this after reading your account, but couldn't find additional information online. Do you have sources we could look at?
- gnarbarian 4y agohttps://medium.com/faa/faa-testing-new-system-to-increase-weather-information-to-alaska-pilots-67301aa329b3 https://medium.com/faa/faa-testing-new-system-to-increase-we... https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://fpaw.aero/sites/default/files/97/reiche.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjUxdyup9T8AhVQAzQIHaS6AIsQFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3c_uEhbAfJn1VWoYi9C0jj https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
- gregsadetsky 4y agoThanks! Cameras list/images: https://weathercams.faa.gov/ https://weathercams.faa.gov/
- mayormcmatt 4y agoThanks so much!
- heyflyguy 4y agoThis is really crazy to read about, and I am thankful you posted this.
- mshake2 4y agoAt this point I'm just waiting for the country to collapse under bureaucracy.
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoIt's not that USA is doing incredibly well with bureaucracy, it's that everybody else is doing worse for one reason or another
- wongarsu 4y agoI don't see much evidence that the US is the best functioning country around. It has a great geographic position and managed to get a great economy (in no small part due to said geographic advantages in WWI and WWII), but in measures that involve the government providing good services the US isn't doing any better than other developed countries.
- gnarbarian 4y agoin fact we're doing far worse on many fronts. we spent more per student than almost any other first world nation but we place dead last in outcomes.
- guhidalg 4y agoView it from the other side: even with this much dysfunction, things work most of the time and when they fail they are recoverable. There's no motivation to improve until something fails hard enough. If no one crashes as a result of this METAR outage, I predict nothing will change.
- dgfitz 4y agoDefine “work” if you don’t mind. There’s currently a power play going on about the national debt, wealth inequality is bad and getting worse, tax money gets wasted like it’s going out of style, social security isn’t and has never been solvent, the bigger government gets the more abstracted away from real people it becomes, and we all just stick our heads in the sand and ignore it because there is nothing the common person can do to effect change. Don’t tell me “go vote” because I do and it does fuck all nothing to change anything. People adapt and say “meh it’s working well enough” because they don’t have a sane alternative.
- sokoloff 4y agoA METAR* is the weather message, not the observation system (AWOS, ASOS, etc). * METeorological Aerodrome Report
- gnarbarian 4y agoyes you are correct.
- chipsa 4y agoThe flip side is that the military also relies on and distributes observations. Last I looked, the FMQ-19 used a windows server 2019 box. And it is used for some of the airports that are dual use, such as Hickam/Honolulu international.
- gnarbarian 4y agohow much does one of those cost?