SiriusXM WX Aviation Receiver

I've been using the new receiver with my ForeFlight for the past couple of weeks now, and as much as I like ADS-B weather (especially since it's free), SiriusXM has it beat hands-down. And it's not even close. There are more and far better weather products with greater fidelity and associated data. And because the Aviation Receiver gets its data from a pair of satellites in a fixed orbit covering the whole USofA, you get reception from the ground on up to as high as you want to go. This is unlike ADS-B, which relies on the transmissions from ground-based transmitters. Want weather on the ground with ADS-B? No dice. How about when you're still low and climbing out? Again, so sorry. And if you're unlucky enough to be far away from an ADS-B station? Once again, you're doing without.

On the subject of better weather products, with the SiriusXM Aviation Receiver you get a greatest hits collection of the company's weather products, including enhanced radar that shows cells with greater detail and includes information on hail, echo tops, tornado-like activity and more. Of course, you get METARS, TAFS, Pireps, TFRs and winds aloft, and graphical versions of all of that, too. It's apples to oranges, ADS-B weather to SiriusXM's, with whichever fruit you like a lot better being the latter of the two. For pilots who fly a lot and fly IFR, like me, the SiriusXM choice is a clear winner.

And with ForeFlight's great integration of this new data, it just gets better. Just like with ADS-B weather in all of the places where you get weather data culled and nominated into various data fields on ForeFlight, you get it with SiriusXM, too, but it's better data and more of it. The killer app part is the NexRad, which when used judiciously and strategically can make all the difference between a flight you complete and spending the night halfway home instead of in some hotel halfway there. In case you can't tell, I'm a longtime user and a big fan.

The box you get from SiriusXM with the new SiriusXM Aviation Receiver is about the size of a brick, and the magic brick inside the box is way smaller than that, about the size of two standard-issue iPhones sitting on top of the other. There's one button, on the bottom of the unit, a microUSB port (hooray for a standard plug) right next to it and, on the lower front face of the unit, a series of tiny LED lights to indicate the status of the receiver.

After I pulled the receiver out of the box, I fired it up, by guessing that I'd have to push the only button on the thing to make that happen. The only tricky part of the process was figuring out how to get the Bluetooth going (I resorted to the manual). Just hold the button down for a few seconds and you'll get the blue light.

Connecting it to my ForeFlight 8 on my iPhone took about 20 seconds. My phone immediately recognized the receiver and connected instantly. I then went back to ForeFlight, added the device in the aptly named "devices" tab, and I was in weather heaven.

The SiriusXM Aviation Receiver goes for $699, but if you hurry you can cash in on a special offer by buying it from Sporty's or SiriusXM for $499. Then you can get an additional $200 rebate for a subscription package for ForeFlight before the end of the year. All of which means, if you're interested at all, now is the time to pull the trigger on that holiday gift to yourself.

Learn more about SiriusXM Aviation.