20010703: Plotting Aircraft Profiles (dcacft) in GEMPAK using acprof: doesn't work

Christian,

acprof & nsharp plot profiles of ACARS/AMDARS data decoded with dcacars. 
Dcacars decodes
the NetCDF files on the PCWS feed that universities can get from FSL directly.
These are both programs I developed independent from NCEPs dcacft decoder.
I have not looked in to what would be needed to plot data in NCEP's file format.

Steve Chiswell
Unidata User Support



>From: Christian Page <address@hidden>
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200107031511.f63FBW106768

>
>Hi,
>
>I decode Aircraft observations using this pqact.conf command:
>DDS|PPS|IDS     (^U[ABDR].... ....|^XRXX84 KAWN|^YIXX84 KAWN) ([0-3][0-9])([0-
> 2]
>[0-9])
>        PIPE    /io/gempak/GEMPAK5.6/bin/irix/dcacft -e GEMTBL=/io/gempak/GEMP
> AK
>5.6/gempak/tables
>        -d logs/dcacft.log
>        data/gempak/acft/YYYYMMDDHH_acf.gem
>
>It works well and I can plot maps with aicraft data plotted.
>But I wanted to plot profiles of this aircraft data. I looked into GEMPAK docs
>and support archives, but couldn't find any help, except in the doc, there's a
>program called acprof for ACARS data stored in SHIP files. Aircraft obs are
>stored in ship files, so I tried it.
>
>But it doesn't work, I get everytime:
>
> [SNPROF 2]  Parameter TMPC is a character type.
> Using           54 aircraft observations
>Enter <cr> to accept parameters or type EXIT:
> [GG -12]  GFUNC or SNPARM must be temperature for Skew T.
>
>My settings are:
>
> SFFILE    ACARS ship format data file
>/io/ldm/data/gempak/acft/2001070315_acf.gem
> DATTIM    Date/time                         all
> AREA      Data area                         lfbo
> SNPARM    Sounding parameter list           tmpc
> LINE      Color/type/width/label/smth/fltr  2;4
> PTYPE     Plot type/h:w ratio/margins       skewt
> VCOORD    Vertical coordinate type          pres
> STNDEX    Stability indices
> STNCOL    Stability index color             1
> WIND      Wind symbol/siz/wdth/typ/hdsz     bk1
> WINPOS    Wind position                     1
> MARKER    Marker color/type/size/width/hw   0
> BORDER    Background color/type/width       1
> TITLE     Title color/line/title            1
> DEVICE    Device|name|x size;y size|color   PS | aa.ps | 11;8.5 | C
> YAXIS     Ystrt/ystop/yinc/lbl;gln;tck
> XAXIS     Xstrt/xstop/xinc/lbl;gln;tck      -40/40/5
> FILTER    Filter data factor                n
> CLEAR     Clear screen flag                 yes
> PANEL     Panel loc/color/dash/width/regn   0
> TEXT      Size/fnt/wdth/brdr/N-rot/just/hw  1
> THTALN    THTA color/dash/width/mn/mx/inc   8/1/1
> THTELN    THTE color/dash/width/mn/mx/inc   6/10/1
> MIXRLN    MIXR color/dash/width/mn/mx/inc   5/2/1
> Parameters requested: SFFILE,DATTIM,AREA,SNPARM,LINE,PTYPE,VCOORD,STNDEX,
> STNCOL,WIND,WINPOS,MARKER,BORDER,TITLE,DEVICE,YAXIS,XAXIS,FILTER,CLEAR,
> PANEL,TEXT,THTALN,THTELN,MIXRLN.
> GEMPAK-ACPROF>
>
>Can this program be used? Or Aircraft obs are stored differently than ACARS in
>ship files?
>
>Thanks a lot again,
>
>Christian Page
>UQAM
>