RE: Radar data decoding (fwd)

===============================================================================
Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
address@hidden             WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
===============================================================================

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 13:26:45 -0400
From: Dan Vietor <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden, address@hidden
Subject: RE: Radar data decoding

Take a look at my NIDS page:

http://weather.unisys.com/wxp/Appendices/Formats/NIDS.html

It is not complete but has enough info to be able to decode the data.
 _______________________________________________________

      Daniel Vietor Mail: address@hidden
      Unisys Corp Title: Engineer/Meteorologist
      221 Gale Lane Phone: 610-925-5206
      Kennett Square PA 19348  Fax: 610-925-5215



  -----Original Message-----
  From: address@hidden
[mailto:address@hidden]On Behalf Of Chaz Braxmeier
  Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2001 10:29 AM
  To: address@hidden; address@hidden
  Subject: Radar data decoding


  I'm pretty new at this NOAAPort thing, and I'm having a bit of
difficulty getting started..      I found this message on the ldm-users
e-mail archive:

  -----------------------
  Does anybody know the format of this data? Is it the same format as is
broadcast
  by the current NIDS providers? Is there a document somewhere that
describes the
  data format so one could write a decoder? I did a quick search on
NOAAPORT and
  NIDS, but came up empty.

  -Chad

  --
  Chad W. Johnson                           E-mail: address@hidden
  Programmer/Meteorologist                  Voice: (608) 265-5292
  Space Science and Engineering Center      Fax: (608) 263-6738
  University of Wisconsin -- Madison
  -------------------------

  But I couldn't find a response.     I'm really looking to use the
non-graphical data from these radar files but am getting nowhere in
terms of finding a format to use and running with it.      We have
version 5.1.2 of LDM, and the NMC3 data feed, so I know we are getting
NIDS data..    and I already have completed a script that strips off the
header.. decompresses the data.. and then strips off the other header
that was inside the compressed data.    So I have lots of files of raw
radar data.. and no idea how to get it into some sort of textual format.
I'd like to build a decoder (if one doesn't already exist) to take this
raw data and process it into a form I can use.   I'd appreciate it if
anyone who has hit this problem before or who hasn't and knows where to
find information could fill me in on what road to proceed down next.
Thanks a bunch in advance for your time..

  Sincerely,
  Chaz Braxmeier