Runways at FDTM
According to the infobox on the English Wikipedia, Tambankulu Airport has one runway: 17/35 - 965 m long (3,166 ft), grass surface.
All runways have a grass surface, which distinguishes this site from airports with a paved runway.
No OurAirports data is available for this airport, so the figures above come from Wikipedia - a community-edited source that can be out of date. The infobox also gives no runway width. Treat these numbers as indicative and check the current AIP before flying.
Runway headings and wind
The thresholds are oriented as follows: 17/35 on 170° and 350° magnetic. A threshold designator is its magnetic heading divided by ten (ICAO Annex 14), so the runway axis can be read straight off the numbers.
For the 17/35 axis, wind from the west (around 260°) or from the east (around 80°) blows perpendicular to the runway and produces the largest crosswind component. Wind from around 170° or 350° acts along the runway, as a headwind or a tailwind. The decoder on this page computes those components automatically from the current METAR.
METAR and TAF for FDTM
Weather reports for Tambankulu Airport are published under the ICAO code FDTM. A METAR is an observation of current conditions, usually issued every 30 or 60 minutes; a TAF is a forecast for the airport area, typically covering 9 to 30 hours.
The decoder breaks the FDTM report down into its parts: wind direction and speed including gusts and variability, visibility (including CAVOK and directional minimum visibility), weather phenomena by WMO code, cloud layers with their bases, temperature and dew point, QNH pressure, and the resulting flight category - VFR, MVFR, IFR or LIFR - using FAA thresholds.
Not every airport issues its own reports; many smaller airfields have no weather station. If no current data is available for FDTM, check the nearby airports listed below.
Reports always use UTC (the Z suffix). The Africa/Maputo zone stays at GMT+02:00 year-round, so converting to local time is always the same shift.
The closest airports in the database, measured in a straight line from the reference point, are Simunye Airport (FDSM, 10 km), Mhlume Airport (FDMH, 14 km), King Mswati III International Airport (Mpaka) (FDSK, 35 km). When no report is available for FDTM, they usually give the best approximation of conditions in the area.
