19990915: displaying fronts in McIDAS (cont.)

>From: "Dan A. Dansereau" <address@hidden>
>Organization: Utah State University
>Keywords: 199909151552.JAA07318 McIDAS FRONT FRNTDISP

Dan,

>    Thanks for the quick response!!
>Basically I'm migrating to the ADDE painfully slow!

OK.  I want to warn you that there are a lot of applications that will
be dropped from the next Unidata McIDAS release (tentatively scheduled
for next summer).   The great majority of these applications are
ones for which an ADDE version exists.

>I had this at first - except my output path was 
>/var/data/surface/front... etc

My example was meant to be a template for what you could put in your
LDM's pqact.conf file.  The directory into which you put the data
is up to you.  All that you have to remember is that your McIDAS
session(s) will need to be able to find the ASUS and FSUS files.
In practice, this means that your session(s) will need to have a
REDIRECTion that points to the ASUS and FSUS files.  For instance,
if the ASUS/FSUS files are being put in /var/data/surface/front, then
the REDIRECT commands that would tell McIDAS to look there are:

REDIRECT ADD ASUS* "/var/data/surface/front
REDIRECT ADD FSUS* "/var/data/surface/front

>took it out to do the ADDE

You don't have to stop filing the frontal reports in ASUS or FSUS
(by the way, the FSUS fronts are forecast fronts) in order for
ADDE commands to work.

>- which didn't work
>tried to put it back & it still don't work - so I 
>figure it is time to do it right - all the way with ADDE/XCD
>
>># fronts in ASUS1ddd
>>DDS     ^ASUS01 .... ([0-3][0-9])([0-2][0-9])
>>        FILE    data/surface/front/ASUS1%j
>>
>># forecast fronts in FSUS2ddd
>>DDS     ^FSUS02 .... ([0-3][0-9])([0-2][0-9])
>>        FILE    data/surface/front/FSUS2%j
>>

To get FRNTDISP working, you need to be running XCD and you need
to be putting the ASUS and FSUS bulletins into the XCD daily text
spool file.  If you follow the example I give on my web pages for
setting up XCD, this will be done for you:

DDPLUS|IDS      ".*"    PIPE
        xcd_run DDS

This says to put ALL products from DDPLUS and IDS (basically, all of
the textual bulletins) into the text spool file (these files have
the suffix .XCD).  The next thing that needs to be in place is
the following entries in the file WXCORE.PRD:

FRONT_ANAL                WMO=ASUS1 WSTN=KWBC
FRONT_FCST                WMO=FSUS2 WSTN=KWBC

These will be there IF you have installed and are using a current version
(i.e. 7.4 or later) of Unidata McIDAS.

The last thing that needs to be in place is a correct dataset definition
for the server that will handle the data.  We send out a template file
for setting up ADDE datasets in our distribution.  The file, DSSERVE.BAT,
is installed in the ~mcidas/data directory, and is designed to be
copied to the file ~mcidas/data/LSSERVE.BAT.  You can make modifications
to the file LSSERVE.BAT if your setup is different from our recommended
standard installation.

FRNTDISP will make requests for frontal data from the text server.
The dataset we recommend is RTWXTEXT and its setup in DSSERVE.BAT/LSSERVE.BAT
is:

REM
REM XCD decoded text products
REM

DSSERVE ADD RTWXTEXT/FOUS14       OBTX    X    X TYPE=TEXT 
INFO=#XCDDATA/FOUS14.RAP   "Real-Time FOUS14 Text
DSSERVE ADD RTWXTEXT/SFCHOURLY    OBTX    X    X TYPE=TEXT 
INFO=#XCDDATA/SAOMETAR.RAP "Real-Time SFC Hourly Text
DSSERVE ADD RTWXTEXT/SYNOPTIC     OBTX    X    X TYPE=TEXT 
INFO=#XCDDATA/SYNOPTIC.RAP "Real-Time SYNOPTIC Text
DSSERVE ADD RTWXTEXT/TERMFCST     OBTX    X    X TYPE=TEXT 
INFO=#XCDDATA/TERMFCST.RAP "Real-Time Terminal Forecast
DSSERVE ADD RTWXTEXT/UPPERAIR     OBTX    X    X TYPE=TEXT 
INFO=#XCDDATA/RAOB.RAP     "Real-Time Upper Air Text


>Let me know what you want to look at & I'll send
>it to you! or You can log on & tak a look for yourself!

First the questions:

o are you running XCD
o did you setup ADDE datasets as per the web page instructions
o did you install the ADDE remote server (under the mcadde account)

It could be that you never did/finished the ADDE setup.  This would explain
you not being able to plot fronts using the ADDE FRNTDISP command.
This does not explain, however, why you can't plot the fronts using
the non-ADDE FRONT command which reads from the ASUS* and FSUS* files
directly.

I am willing to login and poke around if you have tried doing the setup
and have run into a roadblock.

Tom

>From address@hidden  Thu Sep 16 11:54:11 1999

Tom
    I know you don't like to take phone calls -
however - maybe it would be a better use of time.

    I'm setting up 3 labs with Mcidas & Gempak for 
students to use as part of our program here at USU.

   Each lab has 14 or more sun workstations
along with a large server, and all three are in 
different buildings. I have convinced the instructors
that this is the way to go - ( interactive hands on - 
instead of overheads & slide shows! ) but if I don't
do it right, it will get flushed down the drain real quick.

So if you can call me - I'll be in most of today untill 3:30
or If I can call you - what would be a good time??

Dan Danserea
435-797-2182