About HomeDrome

HomeDrome exists for one reason: to give Canadian VFR pilots a fast, honest, scan-once view of conditions at and around their home airport. Open the page, see in 30 seconds whether today's a flying day, where the gaps are, and what the regional picture looks like. Then go file a real briefing.

It's intentionally narrow. Every panel is built around a working pilot's pre-flight scan: current observations, the next 6–12 hours of forecasts, the regional ring out to ~300 NM, and the AI's synthesis of all of it into plain English. Anything that doesn't help a pilot decide "go, no-go, or wait" gets cut.

The AI summaries are there to compress, not to invent. Every claim is anchored in source data the page also shows you raw — METARs, TAFs, GFA charts, NOTAMs, the CFS PDF — so you can verify what the AI said before you trust it. If anything reads as overconfident or unverifiable, that's a bug.

What it is

• A read-only aggregation of publicly available Canadian aviation data — NAV CANADA AWWS, NOAA AWC, ECCC GeoMet, OurAirports CC0, NAV CANADA WxCam, LiveATC.
• A summarizer. Claude reads METARs, TAFs, GFA charts, and the extended-range gridded model, then writes the AI Regional Briefing in plain English with every change-group decoded.
• A "back of envelope" planner. The Quick Plan card gives distance, ETE with winds-aloft headwind component, ETA, and the destination's current conditions. Useful for "is this trip roughly on the table" — nothing more.
• A regional situational-awareness map: SIGMETs, radar, ring stations, obstacle NOTAMs, your route line.

What it is not

• Not a NAV CANADA pre-flight briefing. Per CAR 602.71 the PIC shall, before commencing a flight, be familiar with the available pre-flight information appropriate to the intended flight; per CAR 602.72, the same applies to weather information specifically. HomeDrome is an aid to that familiarisation, not a substitute for it.
• Not a flight planner. No fuel burn, no W&B, no airspace clearance, no aircraft performance, no IFR procedures, no airways routing, no alternate selection logic.
• Not a chart. No VTAs, VNCs, IFR enroute, approach plates, or aerodrome diagrams beyond a simple to-scale runway sketch.
• Not guaranteed to be timely, complete, or correct. Upstream sources go down, AI gets things wrong, our ingest cron has lag.

HomeDrome is meant to sit before a real planner, not replace one. A typical day might look like:

1. Open HomeDrome on the couch. Glance at the AI briefing, the 7-day outlook strip, and the regional map. Decide if today's worth looking at more carefully.
2. If it is — open plan.navcanada.ca for the official briefing, NOTAMs, and weather. That is the legal briefing.
3. For routing and charts, open SkyVector (free; VNC/VTA/IFR enroute) or ForeFlight (paid; full performance + W&B + planning). HomeDrome doesn't duplicate any of this — you'd quickly outgrow it if it tried.
4. Cross-check: confirm winds aloft, the CFS for your destination, and active NOTAMs in the official planner before you go.

If you're using HomeDrome to decide something safety-of-flight critical without verifying it in an official source, please stop and use a real planner instead.

HomeDrome is provided "as is", with no warranty of any kind, express or implied. The author makes no representation that the data shown is accurate, complete, current, or fit for any particular purpose, including flight planning, navigation, or go/no-go decisions.

CAR 602.71 — Pre-flight Information. "The pilot-in-command of an aircraft shall, before commencing a flight, be familiar with the available information that is appropriate to the intended flight."

CAR 602.72 — Weather Information. "The pilot-in-command of an aircraft shall, before commencing a flight, be familiar with the available weather information that is appropriate to the intended flight."

As PIC you are solely responsible under those sections for becoming familiar with the available information through an authorised source. HomeDrome is not an authorised source. Always cross-check with NAV CANADA (plan.navcanada.ca), the current Canada Flight Supplement, current NOTAMs, the TC AIM, and the Canadian Aviation Regulations before flight.

AI-generated text on HomeDrome (the regional briefing, NOTAM classifications, GFA chart interpretations, CFS bullet extracts) is produced by Anthropic's Claude models. AI output may be incomplete, outdated, hallucinated, or wrong in ways that look authoritative. Treat it as a summary you've asked a smart friend to write — useful for orientation, never authoritative. The raw source data is shown alongside every AI summary so you can check.

Use of HomeDrome implies acceptance of these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the site.

• METARs, TAFs, PIREPs, SIGMETs: NOAA Aviation Weather Center (AWC) — public data, no auth required.
• NOTAMs, GFA charts, upper winds: NAV CANADA AWWS (plan.beta.navcanada.ca) — alpha endpoint, no auth. User-Agent identifies HomeDrome.
• Radar mosaic, satellite: Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) GeoMet WMS — open data.
• Aerodrome metadata, runways, frequencies: OurAirports.com (CC0 / public domain).
• Open-Meteo gridded forecast: open-meteo.com — used for inferred weather at non-METAR aerodromes and the extended-range 7-day outlook. Free for non-commercial use.
• WxCam imagery: NAV CANADA's metcam.navcanada.ca network. We link out to the official viewer; we do not embed their imagery.
• LiveATC: we link out to liveatc.net's player. Per their TOS we never embed audio.
• CFS PDFs: Canadian Flight Supplement entries sourced from publicly accessible NAV CANADA / FltPlan endpoints, cached for daily-refresh resilience. Always verify currency at plan.navcanada.ca before flight.
• AI summaries: Anthropic Claude (Sonnet 4.6 for briefings + GFA vision; Haiku 4.5 for NOTAM and CFS bullet extraction). Briefing inputs are not retained beyond the request; outputs are server-cached, shared across users.
• Regulatory references: Canadian Aviation Regulations (CARs) and TC Aeronautical Information Manual (TC AIM) — Transport Canada.

If you operate a data source listed here and have a concern about how HomeDrome uses it, please get in touch.