Jargon for Aviation Weather
- .
- aerodrome = a place where aircraft take off and land. Includes airports on land, and "water aerodromes" on water bodies.
- AIM = Aeronautical Information
Manual
- AGL = Above ground level (use
when reporting heights or altitudes)
- ASL = Above sea level (use
when reporting heights or altitudes)
- attitude = the orientation of the aircraft relative to the flight direction. E.g., nose pitched up or down; wings rolled left or right; tail yawed left or right.
- CAVOK = Ceiling and Visibility
are OK. (i.e., good for VFR flight).
- CDT =
Central Daylight Time (=
UTC - 5 hours)
- Commercial pilot = a type of pilot's license that allows you to
be paid for flying activities, including carrying passengers, cargo,
etc.
- Convection / Convective / Cumuliform Clouds = vertical
clouds with up & downdrafts
- EC = Environment Canada
- ENE = East North East
- FAA = Federal Aviation
Administration (USA)
- ft = feet. Adistance
measure used for altitude. ( 1,000 ft = 304.8 m)
- knot = a unit of speed: a
nautical mile per hour (100 knots = 185 km/hour = 115 mph = 51 m/s)
- ICAO = International Civil
Aviation Organization (part of the United Nations)
- IFR = Instrument Flight Rules
- IMC = Instrument
Meteorological Conditions (i.e., weather in which your are not allowed
to fly by looking out your windscreen)
- lose control of the aircraft = causing the aircraft to have an
attitude that causes one or both wings to lose aerodynamic lift (not
enough air flowing over the wing).The wing(s) then start to fall due to gravity.
In this situation, some of the pilot's normal controls do not work,
making it difficulty for the pilot to change the aircraft attitude to
bring it back to normal controlled flight.
- Maneuvering Speed = safe speed
for an aircraft to fly within violently turbulent air.
- METAR = aerodrome routine
meteorological report
- MSL = above Mean Sea Level
- MVFR = Marginal Visual
Flight Rules
- NWS = US National Weather
Service
- Private Pilot = a type of
pilot's license that allows you to fly almost anywhere, but you cannot
be paid or compensated.
- spin
= a type of stall resulting in autorotation about a vertical axis, and
a shallow, rotating, downward path. Like a corkscrew.
- stall = different things
for a car vs. aircraft. In a car, a stall is when the engine
stops unexpectedly. In an aircraft, the wings stall when they
lose aerodynamic lift, such as when the aircraft is going too
slow. An aircraft stall can (and often does) happen while the
engine is running. When the aircraft stalls, it starts to fall out
of the sky. However, pilots are trained to recover from stalls,
and to avoid flying the aircraft in a way that creates a
stall.
- TAF = Aerodrome Forecast =
weather forecast at airports
- TC = Transport Canada
- USA = United States of America
- UTC = Coordinated Universal
Time = Greenwich Mean Time
(GMT) = Zulu time (Z)
- VFR = Visual Flight
Rules
- VFR over the top = flying in clear
air above the top of a cloud
layer.
- VMC = Visual Meteorological
Conditions (i.e., weather good enough to fly by looking out your
windscreen)
- virga = precipitation that
completely evaporates before reaching the ground.
- WMO = World Meteorological
Organization (part of the United Nations)
- yoke = control yoke = aircraft
steering wheel. Used to bank the plane left or right, and to pitch the nose up or down.
- .
UBC ATSC 113 Weather for
Sailing, Flying & Snow Sports
Copyright © 2016 by Roland Stull
Last modification: Aug 2016
.