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You got screwed. Sort of. If I remember correctly, they can't issue a flimsy number for a VFR flight plan if there is IMC/Convective SIGMETS enroute. Without a flimsy number, you can't file. That might have been what he was getting at.
I disagree that DUATS in this case is perfectly legal.But again, that's not true. As I mentioned before (can't remember if it was this thread or not), DUATS is perfectly legal, and it doesn't issue a Flimsy number. Now how you notate it...that is the question. But Base Ops sure as hell isn't going to know the difference.
Also, I don't buy the convective SIGMETS en route argument. I've been issued a valid brief w/ SIGMETS en route, and that was in the TRACOM where they used to be verbotten until they changed them to slightly less verbotten.
OPNAV 3710.7T said:Where Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (NMOC) or United States Marine Corps Weather Services are locally available, a flight weather briefing shall be obtained from a qualified meteorological forecaster. Weather briefings may be obtained in person, by telephone, by facsimile, or by remote computer-based weather briefing system. If NMOC or USMC Services are not locally available, an FAA-approved weather briefing from either a Flight Service Station (FSS) or Direct User Access Terminal System (DUATS) may be substituted.
Is DUATS legal? Only in the absence of local weather briefers. Since he was filing at New River, and base ops and the wx guessers are not 20 feet from each other, I'd guess that he's kinda bound to use them.
With the decrease in local weather forecasters (not just the guy briefing you) around USN/USMC bases, isn't it becoming a gray area? In other words if you're having to get your dash-1 from a forecaster in Norfolk, wouldn't it be easier to just use DUATS or 1-800-WX-BRIEF? The latter is what I will use today since it's the weekend and (more importantly) I'm not taking off from Navy Corpus (but International instead).