helisiapp lite — User Guide
Everything the tool does, one topic at a time. helisiapp lite estimates what a cloud height reported at a nearby weather station would be over your facility — which is often at a different elevation and frequently has no weather station of its own.
Cloud bases in a METAR or TAF are given as height above ground level (AGL) at the reporting station. If your facility sits higher than that station, the same cloud deck is effectively lower above your facility — and vice-versa. This tool does that elevation correction for you, flags the conditions that matter to a helicopter operation, and always shows the raw report so you can verify everything yourself.
What makes this tool different
Built for helicopter IFR planning
This tool exists for one job: estimating ceiling and visibility over a specific facility for special instrument approach and departure planning. Most such facilities — hospital helipads, offshore platforms, private sites — have no weather station of their own, so the only available report comes from somewhere else, at a different elevation. helisiapp lite does that elevation correction, flags what matters to a helicopter operation, and always shows you the raw report so you can check its work.
It is a planning aid, not an approved weather source, and the pilot in command remains the final authority.
Our blue is not MVFR blue — read this carefully
Aviation weather products conventionally color-code flight categories, and blue commonly means MVFR: a ceiling at or below 3,000 ft. helisiapp lite also uses blue, but our blue triggers at 1,500 ft — half that height.
This is deliberate. A 3,000 ft ceiling is not the number that decides a helicopter special IFR approach or departure; the heights that matter to this kind of operation sit far lower. So the scale is compressed to the band where the decisions actually happen:
| helisiapp lite | Common MVFR convention | |
|---|---|---|
| Blue | below 1,500 ft | at or below 3,000 ft |
| Red | below 1,000 ft | — |
| Pink | below 500 ft | — |
Every layer is flagged — not just the ceiling
Conventional flight-category color coding keys off the ceiling — the lowest broken or overcast layer. Scattered and few layers don’t set a category, so they typically go uncolored.
helisiapp lite flags every layer it can see, including FEW and SCT.
A few layer at 400 ft doesn’t set a ceiling and wouldn’t register on a conventional category display. It is still something a helicopter pilot planning an approach or departure wants to know about. So it gets flagged here, at its elevation-adjusted height, the same as any other layer.
Credit where it’s due: the Aviation Weather Center does surface this. A station with cloud below 3,000 ft that doesn’t meet the ceiling definition gets a green dot with an orange border, rather than being drawn as though nothing were there. It’s the one widely-used product that doesn’t let those layers vanish.
helisiapp lite takes the same concern further in two ways: the layers are flagged at their elevation-adjusted height over your facility rather than as reported at the station, and they’re flagged on the same scale as everything else — no separate “there is something here” marker, just the layer, its height, and its color. And no green, for the reason below.
The consequence worth internalising: a colored flag on this tool does not necessarily mean the ceiling is low. It means a layer is low. Open the facility to see which layer, at what height, and what coverage.
Why there’s no green
helisiapp lite uses no green anywhere. Green reads as good, and good is a conclusion for the pilot to reach after looking at the weather — not a color the tool should hand over before they’ve looked. A facility with nothing flagged here shows a neutral outline, not a reassuring one. The absence of a flag means nothing crossed a threshold, which is not the same as conditions are fine.
The same reasoning drives how missing data is handled: when a station’s sensor isn’t reporting, the tool says so plainly rather than rendering the gap as clear sky. See Missing observation data.
What this tool is not
There is no weather radar, no satellite, no precipitation or lightning overlay, no graphical map layers of any kind. The map view plots facilities and their reporting stations geographically — that’s all it does.
This is a scope decision, not a limitation to be worked around. helisiapp lite estimates cloud and visibility for IFR planning, and everything else you need — radar, imagery, AIRMETs, SIGMETs, NOTAMs, and an approved briefing — comes from your normal sources. Use this alongside them, not instead of them.