Re: noaaport/awips at psc? (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: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 16:51:05 -0600
From: Ben Domenico <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: Re: noaaport/awips at psc? (fwd)

In the words of Jim Koermer, here's what's happening at Plymouth state.
I'm still not sure about what they will end up with in the end, but it
sounds like a NOAAport receiver (from Unisys, not PRC) and an FX-Net system
accessing information from the FSL full AWIPS system in Boulder.  The
installation is imminent.

--Ben

---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Friday, October 01, 1999, 6:03 PM -0400
From: Jim Koermer <address@hidden>
To: Ben Domenico <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: noaaport/awips at psc?

Ben,

Funding for all of this took much longer than expected (no different
than NSF in many respects), but we finally got the go ahead in July.
There was no real vacation this summer and we've been going straight out
since that time. Because of the funding delay, we also couldn't find an
electrician who had time in their schedules to do the needed electrical
work within our initially stated timelines, so we had to delay about a
month longer than expected.

In any case, Unisys will be installing a full NOAAPORT system here next
week. The dish is lying (partially assembled) on our roof and it was
supposed to be installed this week, but we had to have a structural
engineer verify that our roof could handle the loading with snow. Dan
Veitor will be coming to set up the ingestor PCs and tune LDM for
passing the data to other systems.

The rest of our lab is just starting to take place. We now have 15 NT
workstations with FX-Net installed on them. FX-Net is an AWIPS
look-alike in many respects, but lacks some of its functionality.
However, one of our tasks will be to provide FSL with feedback, since
this is really in the beta mode.  We've been doing some testing since
late June on a couple of machines to check connectivity, but this
earlier version was basically good only for model data visualization,
but quite poor for most other things. On the new lab systems, an FSL rep
came earlier this week to install a new release. They appeared to have
followed many of our prioritized suggestions and now the satellite
imagery and surface data components have improved dramatically. 

Currently, much of the processing is done at FSL on a server and in some
respects, FX-Net is like a customized JAVA web browser that looks like
the typical AWIPS display. The version that they delivered this week is
now customized for our region. The initial test version was localized
for your area.  

We've spent about $100K just on site prep and furnishings for this new
lab/multimedia classroom space. This also includes upping our network
throughput by an order of magnitude. The NT machines are Dell P-III
500MHz machines with 21" Trinitron monitors. We also have a permanently
installed multimedia projector that can be driven well even with
1280x1024 output.

The NOAAPORT will not immediately feed these systems, but it is being
installed in preparation for next year's effort, where we expect to have
a full LAPS capability that we can run locally and the results will be
compatible with the FX-Net package and the data currently received from
FSL.

Joe and I have been busier than you can imagine bringing all of this
together, but we will have one helluvah facility when it's
completed--hopefully in about another week or two for the few final
items.

                                 Jim
-- 
James P. Koermer             E-Mail: address@hidden
Professor of Meteorology     Office Phone: (603)535-2325
Natural Science Department   Office Fax: (603)535-2723
Plymouth State College       WWW: http://vortex.plymouth.edu/
Plymouth, NH 03264

Ben Domenico wrote:
> 
> Jim,
> 
> What's the latest scoop on your NOAAport/AWIPS system.   Are you getting
> the full system or will you be accessing the data from a weather service
> office?   When are they estimating you might have it?
> 
> --Ben
> ******************************************************
>    Ben Domenico                Unidata Deputy Director
>    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu           P.O. Box 3000
>    address@hidden              Boulder, CO 80307
>    (303)497-8631                    FAX: (303)497-8690

---------- End Forwarded Message ----------



--Ben
******************************************************
   Ben Domenico                Unidata Deputy Director
   http://www.unidata.ucar.edu           P.O. Box 3000
   address@hidden              Boulder, CO 80307
   (303)497-8631                    FAX: (303)497-8690