Aviation Weather Sources for Drone Pilots

A phone weather app tells you whether to bring a jacket. Aviation weather tells you about visibility, cloud bases, gusts and storms in the format the Part 107 test uses. The FAA's Remote Pilot Study Guide points to the same small set of official sources, and the test expects you to know what each one is for.

Where do surface observations come from?

The study guide says surface observations come from a network of government and contracted stations, with automated systems, the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) and the Automated Weather Observing System (AWOS), playing a major role. They report the current conditions at a specific airport: wind, visibility, weather, clouds, temperature and dew point, and the altimeter setting.

Those observations are published as METARs. The study guide notes:

• METAR is the routine report, on a regular schedule. SPECI is a special report issued between routine ones when conditions change quickly.
• AUTO marks a report from an automated station, and AO1 or AO2 in the remarks tells you whether it has a precipitation sensor.
• Station identifiers in the 48 contiguous states start with K. Alaska stations start with PA and Hawaii with PH.

The Chart Supplement lists each airport's ASOS or AWOS frequency and phone number. The Chart Supplement post shows where.

What forecasts and advisories matter?

The study guide lists the printed forecasts pilots should know:

For a drone, the TAF and any convective SIGMET near your site matter most. The TAF guide decodes forecasts line by line.

Where do you get an official briefing?

Two FAA-backed places:

• aviationweather.gov, the NOAA Aviation Weather Center, which the study guide cites for METARs and PIREPs. Clear107's density altitude calculator pulls its live data from there.
• 1800wxbrief.com, Flight Service. The FAA's sample questions name it twice: as the way to check the NOTAM in a chart's caution box, and as the source of an outlook briefing.

A full briefing covers weather and NOTAMs together, which is the habit the test rewards.

What the exam asks about weather sources

Weather sources are ACS task UA.III.A: internet briefings and weather sources in UA.III.A.K1, METARs in K2, TAFs in K3, weather charts in K4, and ASOS and AWOS in K5. Expect a question on which source to use for a purpose, plus METAR and TAF decoding. The METAR guide and the METAR decoder cover the report itself, and the thunderstorm post covers what the warnings mean.