iOS map — pins, wind, sampling

The iOS app ships a dedicated airport map in addition to the SIGMET map. Pins are circles coloured by flight category (VFR green, MVFR blue, IFR red, LIFR purple) with a plane icon. An orange ring signals an active SIGMET within 200 NM.

BBox loading

Each pan/zoom triggers a 400 ms debounced METAR fetch for the visible bounding box. If you barely moved (<25% of the span) the fetch is skipped to save API calls.

Wide-zoom sampling

• Span > 40°: major international only (priority ≥ 3), 3.3° spacing
• Span 20–40°: medium+ (priority ≥ 2), 1.8° spacing
• Span 12–20°: small commercial+ (priority ≥ 1), 1.3° spacing
• Span ≤ 12°: all airports, 0.5° spacing, up to 40 pins

Surface wind — the station model

With the wind layer on (icon top-right) at SFC, every pin becomes a METAR station model: the category-coloured disc is the station and the wind staff radiates from its rim in the direction the wind blows FROM. The airplane glyph stays, and the ICAO label stays readable — with southerly winds (the staff would point at the label) the callsign automatically flips above the pin.

Reading the knots

Add up the ticks from the tip of the staff: solid triangle = 50 kt, full tick = 10 kt, half tick = 5 kt; below 5 kt the staff stays bare. The staff colour gives the speed class at a glance: blue below 25 kt, orange from 25 kt (or gusting ≥ 25), red from 40 kt — a gust raises the class even when the mean wind is light.

Calm, variable, gusts

A solid ring around the pin = observed calm (00000KT). A dashed ring = variable wind (VRB): no direction is invented and the knots appear in a tag next to the pin. No ring = the airport does not report a wind group. Gusts show a Gxx tag; the tag picks a free side by itself — never over the staff, the callsign or another airport — and hides when there is no room (the value stays on the airport detail page).

Winds aloft — a model forecast

At FL25–FL300 the barbs are not observations: they are the model forecast (ICON-EU over Europe, GFS elsewhere), sampled on a regular grid — the points are not airports, and for clarity the airport pins disappear. The levels match the standard pressure surfaces (925/850/700/500/300 hPa). Each barb carries a speed/temperature capsule; near a SIGMET pin the barb shifts a few points to stay readable.

Stepping forward in time

Aloft, the time strip appears: +0h, +3h, +6h, +12h, +24h. Each step shows the forecast for that hour, with the Zulu valid time in the legend; away from +0h the chips turn orange and a banner reminds you that you are looking at the future (tap it to jump back to +0h). At SFC there is no strip: a METAR is an observation — it cannot be stepped forward.

Auto-geolocation (Pro)

When you open the Map tab, the app automatically locates your position and centres the map on you (Pro feature). A live blue dot shows where you are. If you pan away, an always-visible recenter button appears — tap it to snap back to your location. If location is denied or unavailable, the map falls back to a wide-Europe view so you still have a geographic reference.