Is METAR Live Weather realistic?

Yesterday I try take off with 80% loaded default Grand Caravan at KASE Aspen.
When I had live weather set to on I had difficulty to take off and I was almost permanently in stall.
After switch to scattered clouds preset I fly about 20 knots faster.
What is more realistic please? That low performance with METAR or manual weather selection?
Thanks.

Aspen is at about 8000 feet did you lean the engine?

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There’s an actual real world problem with Aspen’s METAR generator. That’s one. Second, for a while MSFS was experiencing huge temperature spikes.

Not a lot of leaning to be done on a turbine engine ;).

The answer is, yes METAR live weather in general is quite realistic. As far as what happened in your case, we don’t have enough information. I doubt it was a density altitude issue as this is winter in Aspen, but I wonder if you accidentally tried to take off with a strong tailwind in the live weather?

probably a bug from the OAT. With the bug, when the temperature is low, you’ll gather ice on the plane.

you can’t lean a turboprop

:joy::wink:
He…he… one can always try… even if it is impossible.

I checked wind direction and I performed take off into the wind. In fact I needed whole runway length to reach take off speed. And I had all de-ice system turned on.

It does sound like a density altitude problem, so it’s possible you saw the outside air temp bug: an anamolous very high temp. It should have been cured by the time you experienced it, and it usually (though not always) occurred at higher altitudes… but you might have just been lucky ;).

You’ll have to try again with live weather and see what happens.

I try it again last night - but there was no snow in Aspen with Live Weather :frowning:
It does not look like Live Weather is working right now.

That has nothing to do with taking off into the wind :wink:

Well, kinda, but it would help you.

Had a similar problem couple of days ago in the Bonanza struggling to takeoff from a Canadian airport, not realising temp was way below freezing. I only had light icing - the Bonanza doesn’t have regular de-icing equipment but it DOES have prop heating. Switched that on and no further problems.

I did lean the engine during pre-takeoff runup although at 2500ft it wasn’t a lot.

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It sounds like live weather wasn’t working for you. So likely your OAT was the default 20C, which could make taking off there problematic considering Aspen’s high altitude.

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I hope they will fix Live Weather with next update when they broke it with SU7.

Yeah, I’ve had zero live weather most of my flying time since SU7 came out. Some folks have found that there seems to be a daily live weather out outage at around 6–PM (-ish) Eastern time every day. Personally, I’ve flown for days on end without any live weather working at all then it just comes back, stays for a couple of days, and then drops again for several more days.

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So all of this means that current METAR Live Weather definitely is not correctly interpreted and it is risky to use for flight.

It means that when it works, it will be about as accurate as the pre-METAR reports were. In my experience, it’s pretty hit or miss. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s out in left field somewhere.

Unfortunately, I’ve experienced far more “live weather not working at all” since SU7 than having it work, so it’s hard to gauge how accurate it is over time. It’s so rare that I have weather working at all.

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Since I think I’m the only one who mentioned wind, I’ll point out that my suggestion was that he’d accidentally taken off with a strong tailwind - which would emphatically not help you. :wink:

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Last 2 days I tried Live Weather and it looks like a joke. On every place I have been was a sunny, clear sky amd warm weather. Even there’s a cold winter :grin::grin::grin: for example Stockholm.
Really “live” weather. Old implementation worked much much bet I think.

Then you have the same issue I have. Your live weather isn’t wrong. It’s NOT WORKING. Like at all.

There are 2 very different scenarios here that people keep mistakenly lumping together. First is weather being terrible and not matching or having temperature issues. The second is weather not working.