The New Stratus ADS-B Free-Weather Receiver

Editor-in-Chief Robert Goyer flies the new Stratus and brings you the scoop on the ADS-B's capabilities.

ForeFlight displays Metars on a pop-up window. This one, for Georgetown, Texas, shows pleasant though blustery weather.

ForeFlight Mobile displays graphical Sigmets. Here you can see in grey Sigmets for IFR conditions and in yellow, over the storm, convective activity.

Using the measuring tool on ForeFlight, you can easily see how far you are from the weather and how long it will take you to get there from your present position.

Another cool ForeFlight product, graphical temperature/dewpoint spread. With this tool it’s easy to see where reduced visibility might come into play.

Even though not every site sends up national weather, enough do that you get a coherent national weather picture. Here while over Central Texas we check out the current weather in Bangor, Maine.

Tapping on the Sigmet box gives you immediate information about that notice. Thunderstorms are brewing!

A good view of just how much information is available via ADS-B for such a wide area of coverage.

Another cool ForeFlight tool: ceilings. Here we can see that the ceiling at Beeville is 6,500 feet.

Metars are handy, but if you’re a ways away from your destination, the TAF is what you want.

You can even get Pireps via ADS-B. This MD88 found the ceiling to be 2300 with the tops at 6,000 feet.

**In addition to being an ADS-B receiver, Stratus is also a WAAS receiver. Check out the GPS accuracy: 1 meter! The idea, by the way, is not to fly instrument procedures with your iPad!
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The Stratus Status (cute) shows us receiving two stations with several others being acquired (shown in yellow). You can, you can note here, also control the Stratus from ForeFlight Mobile. Here you can turn down the LED brightness and even set it to power down automatically when it’s connected to USB power.

Yet another great ForeFlight innovation, graphical sky coverage. It’s scattered at Gillespie County, Texas.

**Graphical winds aloft are another great ADS-B product. Here we're looking at the surface winds, another handy feature.
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A line of widely scattered convective activity stretching southeast from Dallas.

The new Stratus ADS-B free-weather receiver ($799) is built by Appareo and sold by Sporty’s. ForeFlight Mobile is the iPad app on which its data is displayed.

Photos

Flying StaffEditor

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