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3 Answers

AWOS, ASOS, ATIS confusion

Asked by: 4373 views General Aviation, Weather

I'm in the middle of ground school and the topic is weather.  We've been given a description and examples of ASOS and AWOS information, as well as ATIS.

ATIS is, of course updated every hour, and given an identifier at each update, i.e. "information Alpha".

ASOS is updated every minute.  The first assignment was to call the local airport (KGOK) ASOS and get the information, including time.

The second assignment was to call a nearby airport (KPWA) ASOS and get the info. I noticed, however, that PWA's ASOS is only updated hourly, similar to an ATIS.  But, it is not given an identifier.

Could someone please explain why one is updated every minute, and the other only hourly?  They are both automated systems.

 

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3 Answers



  1. Ken White on Sep 03, 2016

    My understanding is that at towered fields the controllers set the AWOS to a METAR setting when the tower is attended which results in it only updating on the hour. KPWA is a towered airport for a portion of the day where KGOK is not (which is why KGOK updated every minute when you checked). Taking a quick look at the AF/D for KPWA it looks like the tower controllers show up at 7AM and head home at 10PM. If you try calling the AWOS when the tower is unattended you should notice the AWOS updating every minute.

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  2. RickS on Sep 04, 2016

    Thank you Ken!

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  3. Ken White on Sep 04, 2016

    No problem. I should add that I don’t know if this is the case at all part time towered airports with an AWOS. I asked the controllers at KIXD where I noticed the different AWOS reporting behavior and that was the answer they gave.

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