Hi all,
I've worked on an update metar.dat than you can get from http://pastebin.com/ExviPAuE
It uses the May 2016 update from the METAR weather stations list from NOAA.
It make the number of stations grows of about 40%, while deleting removed weather stations and adding new. So it should probably enhance the weather accuracy in FG and avoid network queries of non existing METARs.
This file hasn't been updated for years.
If you feel OK with this file, I'll post a short info on the devel list and then ask for the replacement of the current metar.dat.gz by this file.
I will not update stations in this file, if some are wrong, as I want to use a official reference. You should wait for an downstream update from NOAA.
Best,
Oliver