20020325: Trouble with DCUAir

Joseph,

the decoders all need some way of finding the beginning and end of
a belletin. Both FOS and AFOS use a pattern of 4 characters in their broadcast 
to
signal the start and end of a transmitted product. The DC library is designed to
recognize these sequences to find a complete product.

A typical bulletin that you receive via the IDD looks like:

^A \r \r \n        <-- ^A is SOH, eg octal \001, \r is CR and \n is NL 
 ### \r \r \n      <-- ### is the bulletin sequence number
UANT14 KBBC.....

......
\r \r \n           <-- last 4 characters CR CR NL ETX (eg \003).
^C



AFOS similarly uses 4 characters ZCZC instead of ^A \r \r \n
and NNNN instead of \r \r \n ^C.

Since your bulletin does not have these sequences, dcuair never finds the 
the bulletin, so you don't get any output. Its probably easier to type the AFOS
characters at the keyboard, so here's an example of your data:

ZCZC
UZNT14 KWBC 281855
XXAA  78182 99240 70759 08045 99015 28848 09514 00136 27447 09518
92822 21418 07016 85552 20468 08020 70198 09856 09519 50590 06165
12010 40760 18962 06526 30969 32174 11041 25095 41374 12551 20243
515// 12561 88999 66179 12575 416//
61616 NOAA9 0504A DANIELLE OB 01 KWBC
62626 SPL 2402N07602W=
NNNN

--> cat test.uair | dcuair -c 980828/1900 -v 1 -d - YYYYMMDD_sonde.gem
[18703] 020326/0601 [DC 3]  Starting up.
[18703] 020326/0601 [DC -9]  End of input data file.
[18703] 020326/0601 [DC 5]  Normal termination.
[18703] 020326/0601 [DC 2]  Number of bulletins read and processed: 1
[18703] 020326/0601 [DC 6]  Shutting down.

GEMPAK-SNLIST>snfile = 19980828_sonde.gem
 GEMPAK-SNLIST>r

 SNPARM = PRES;TEMP;DWPT;DRCT;SPED;HGHT                                         

 STID =               STNM =   118009   TIME = 980828/1800         
 SLAT =  24.00     SLON =   -75.90   SELV = -9999.0
 STIM =  1800

      PRES     TEMP     DWPT     DRCT     SPED     HGHT
   1015.00    28.80    24.00    95.00     7.20 -9999.00
   1000.00    27.40    22.70    95.00     9.30   136.00
    925.00    21.40    19.60    70.00     8.20   822.00
    850.00    20.40     2.40    80.00    10.30  1552.00
    700.00     9.80     3.80    95.00     9.80  3198.00
    500.00    -6.10   -21.10   120.00     5.10  5900.00
    400.00   -18.90   -30.90    65.00    13.40  7600.00
    300.00   -32.10   -56.10   110.00    21.10  9690.00
    250.00   -41.30   -65.30   125.00    26.30 10950.00
    200.00   -51.50 -9999.00   125.00    31.40 12430.00
    179.00 -9999.00 -9999.00   125.00    38.60 -9999.00
 Parameters requested: SNFILE,AREA,DATTIM,SNPARM,STNDEX,LEVELS,VCOORD,OUTPUT,
 MRGDAT.
 GEMPAK-SNLIST>e

Steve Chiswell
Unidata User Support

>From: "Joseph Sabato" <address@hidden>
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200203252314.g2PNEua13586

>Hello,
>       We're trying to use the DCUair to decode upper air data in Gempak, to
>ultimately end up plotting some SKew-T's.  When we run the program we use
>this command:
>DCUAIR -c 980828/1811 Hurrican.snd < Hurrican.xmt
>       The data is in the format listed below, this is just a segment of the d
> ata.
>However, the errors seen are
> DCUAIR[3386]: Starting up.
> DCUAIR[3386]: [DC -9]  End of input data file.
> DCUAIR[3386]: Normal Termination.
> DCUAIR[3386]: Number of bulletins read and processed: 0
> DCUAIR[3386]: Shutting Down.
>
>       Any help or suggestions would be beneficial, I've seen somethings about
>  FOS
>formatted WMO bulletins, however I'm not sure what they look like or what
>they are.
>       Thanks,
>       Joseph Sabato
>Sonde # 982010111  1811 UTC  28 Aug 98
>UZNT14 KWBC 281855
>XXAA  78182 99240 70759 08045 99015 28848 09514 00136 27447 09518
>92822 21418 07016 85552 20468 08020 70198 09856 09519 50590 06165
>12010 40760 18962 06526 30969 32174 11041 25095 41374 12551 20243
>515// 12561 88999 66179 12575 416//
>61616 NOAA9 0504A DANIELLE OB 01 KWBC
>62626 SPL 2402N07602W=
>