20000120: using COTV on GOES sounder images

>From: address@hidden
>Organization: Texas Tech
>Keywords: 200001202158.OAA03113 McIDAS COTV

Rick,

>Hello. I am working on a thesis dealing with the 8-9 May 1998 dryline in
>the West Texas/western Oklahoma area. I am trying to work with the sounder
>data from GOES-8 and DPI, LI, and Precip. Water enhancements. I am able to
>use the enhancements, but I am having trouble contouring them. I have
>tried using the "COTV" command, but I am getting "SATADR: FRAME AREA
>MISMATCH 3070" as an error, or something similar to that. I thought "3070"
>was the AREA file I had to use, but I got the same error with it. Am I
>even using the correct command? I hope I have explained the problem
>adequately. Thank you for any help you can offer.

I looked at the COTV code and found that it was (no longer?) making the
call that would get needed information from the frame directory.  This
causes the sanity check on AREA number to fail just as you report.

I put a modified version of cotv.pgm in the pub/mcidas directory of
anonymous FTP on our FTP server, ftp.unidata.ucar.edu.

In Unix, in order to create a new executable from the modified source,
you will need to do the following:

login as the user 'mcidas'
cd mcidas7.6/src
ftp ftp.unidata.ucar.edu
 anonymous
 <your full email address>
 cd pub/mcidas
 get cotv.pgm
 quit
make cotv.k
rm ~/bin/cotv.k
ln cotv.k ~/bin
   
Along the same lines, I need to point out that non-ADDE routines like
COTV are scheduled to be deleted from McIDAS in the next release.  A
complete list of routines that are scheduled for "sunset" can be found
in:

Unidata McIDAS-X
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/mcx
  Sunset Items
  http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/mcx/sunset.html

You will see from the sunset list that the replacement routine for COTV
is IMGPROBE (for 2-D contours, not 3-D contours).  In order to use
IMGPROBE, however, you would have had to load the image(s) using
the ADDE command IMGDISP.  This, in turn, means that you would need
to understand ADDE datasets.  You can learn more about ADDE in:

Unidata McIDAS Learning Guide
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/packages/mcidas/mclearn760/learn_guide.html

I hope that this helped...

Tom Yoksas