20000225: creating McIDAS MD files from archived text (final)

>From: Mark Anderson <address@hidden>
>Organization: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
>Keywords: 200002212031.NAA01679 McIDAS archive data

Mark,

>I tried to read the files but could not. Hey, I just went and down
>loaded some other historical data from SSEC and will use that for my
>lab this week (The reason I wanted the data in the first place).

Since I was really suprised that you were not able to plot data from
the MD files that I made, I went back and tried some tests myself.
I was able to plot Skew-Ts, upper air contour plots, and vertical
cross sections from the files for the 17th and 18th (MDXX0018/28 and
MDXX0019/29).  The files for the 16th had very little data in them,
but given that I used raw data files from 11, 12, 13, and 14Z for
the 17th and 18th, this was to be expected.

I am curious about what you tried to do that failed?  If you only
tried plotting data from the MD files from the 16th, then I understand
the failure.  If you tried plotting data from the 17th/18th, then
I have to suspect that the FTP was not done in binary mode.

>It would be nice to be able to get this type of data from SSEC.

As I setup a network of cooperating ADDE sites, one should be able to
get data from any/all of them.  SSEC would, at that point, not be needed
for MDXX, TEXT, or GRID access.

>I guess this is just another reason to learn GEMPAK and forget McIDAS.

This is, of course, up to you.  In this particular instance I don't see
much difference in what would have to be done to get the data in a
form that is usable (i.e., you would have to decode the raw obs into
GEMPAK files just like I had to do for McIDAS files).

Tom