Garmin and ForeFlight take top honors for bringing weather and flight planning to the palm of your hand, but no single service hits all the high notes.

By Frank H. Robinson

Collecting, assimilating, and safely deciding what to do about weather is one of the hardest things we pilots do. But it seems like every computer platform to do this has a drawback.

Weather terminals at FBOs are handy but require lots of clicks. I might drill down through many pages for METARs—a U.S. map, region map, and a state map—then

AvWx.net displays data for one airport at a time from a simple menu. It’s no-frills but reliable.

scroll a long alphabetical list of stations. I go to more screens for TAFs, winds and temps, PIREPS, forecasts and satellite images. Then I try to picture the data on my route. For airport info, I pull out a book. …