VFR Weather Briefings
It’s always nice when someone else helps you to decipher the weather. In the old days, it was standard to always make a phone call and have a professional weather briefer decipher the weather maps for you and help you understand the full weather picture that you were looking at out the window. Today we have lots of apps and online resources to get weather briefings from. The most crucial thing to do, whether you choose to pick up the phone and speak to someone or use an online resource, is to make sure you are getting your information from an FAA approved official source. YOU ALWAYS WANT SOMEONE OR SOMETHING TO RECORD YOUR NAME OR TAIL NUMBER WHEN GETTING A BRIEFING.
The reason you want a record of this is pure CYA. You want to be able to show the FAA (or anyone else for that matter) that you did your due diligence and complied with 91.103 (preflight planning). Included in your briefing will be NOTAMs and TFRs. You want to be able to prove you checked these, trust me! (or trust the guys who got a call from the FAA after flying through a TFR they were not aware of).
In the video above, we’ll take a look at what a regular phone call with a weather briefer sounds like (1800-992-7433) 1800-WX-BRIEF.
If you are looking for a good, free online resource without talking to someone (I would highly recommend you always call instead of go online), you can try 1800wxbrief.com