20040615:IDV - linux - plotting point data at altitudes off the surface level

> In your example file of point data (metar station data) in netcdf format on the 
> Unidata ftp site at:
> ftp://ftp.unidata.ucar.edu/pub/idv/sample_data/04052616_metar.nc
> the elevation is 354 meters, or something close to that.
>
> The IDV station plot of this data appears at 0 meters.
[...]


Hi Stu,
My fault in pointing you to the PointObFactory. It turns out that netcdf 
file based metar data  is processed by
the NetcdfPointDataSource class in method makePointOb.

In there there is a line commented out:
           int altIndex = type.getIndex(RealType.Altitude);
           //if (altIndex == -1) altIndex = type.getIndex("elev");

As you pointed out the netcdf file has altitude as "elevation". The 
problem with uncommenting this
line is that it leads to an error later when we create a
EarthLocationTuple which uses the real tuple type 
RealTupleType.LatitudeLongitudeAltitude
which does not match the "elevation" component. One possible work around 
would be to convert
the data file to use altitude instead of elevation. Since you also are 
working from the code base you could
change NetcdfPointDataSource to convert the elevation  component to 
altitude.

-Jeff