20011101: a hopefully less thick-headed McIDAS question

>From: Robert Mullenax <address@hidden>
>Organization: NMSU/NSBF
>Keywords: 200111011442.fA1Egv124586 McIDAS VAD

Robert,

>Sorry about the thick headedness of my recent e-mails
>regarding future OS support..hopefully this is
>less so.

No problem whatsoever.  The issue of platform support/dierction is on
everyone's mind, so asking/talking about it specifically is beneficial 
to all.

>I can't find in the current McIDAS distribution
>how one would display the VAD winds which will be coming 
>in NOAAPORT soon.  Am I missing something, or is this
>capability coming later?  Obviously the VAD winds are something
>that are very useful for NSBF.

I never wrote a decoder for the VAD winds because the product is more of
a picture than a file of data.  Dan Vietor did tell me a long time ago
that one could extract some quantative values from the product, but
at the time folks were basically only getting 3 NEXRADs, so it didn't
see like the gain was worth the effort.

I have an idea :-)  How about you dig up the documentation for the VAD
products (or strike up a conversation on on of the email lists and see
if someone already has the documentation/techniques) and see if one
really can extract wind direction, speed, and height?  If the job is
not incredibly horrible, I will try and pump out an ldm-mcidas decoder
to write the VAD winds into an MD file whose schema will match that of
the 6-minute wind profiler.  This way, all of the data could be written
to one file and hosted through ADDE.

(Soap box time) It seems to me that GEMPAK users are always doing a
bunch of the leg work for new decoders, but the same is never done by
McIDAS users.  It is time for the McIDAS community to become more
interactive!

(Aside, GEMPAK doesn't support the VAD stuff either, at least, it
didn't the last time I looked).

Tom

>From address@hidden Thu Nov  1 09:14:53 2001
>Subject: Re: 20011101: a hopefully less thick-headed McIDAS question 

I'll do that Tom.  It would be of use for Universal and NSBF.
I asked SSEC about it as well..haven't heard back from them
as of yet.  Steve confirmed for me yesterday that GEMPAK
will not display them either. I wish I was truly a programmer
and could do more of this kind of stuff..but developing products
and keeping everything running keeps me occupied.  I will track
down the docs or ask around.

I agree about the McIDAS community needing to become more active.
I was shocked to hear from you how little interest there seems
to be in radar or much else these days.  Another golden opportunity
being passed up for learning is the fact that the AMRC stuff
isn't being used.  Give students the task everyday of issuing
a forecast for the Willie Field AWS/ for Wille Field/Ice Runway,
and for the synoptic obs from McMurdo itself.  That would be
a great exercise..of course it's a bad word to mention operational
meteorology in academia now..even more so than when I was in school
15-20 years ago.

Thanks,
Robert

>From address@hidden Tue Nov  6 15:50:44 2001
>Subject: Re: 20011105: VAD Winds, satellite imagery (cont.)

Actually I got a link today from a guy at OU that pointed me
to a document from NOAA giving the dirty details
on everything connected with NEXRAD.  Unfortunately it
is so far above my head, I'd need binoculars to see the bottom.
I will ftp it to the incoming directory at Unidata..in case
it might do you some good.

>To me, this is unclear at best.  A quick read of the EUMETSAT web pages
>reveals nothing about redistribution, but it is very clear about who
>can get the data for free.  The question will be whether or not the
>data (outside of the 0, 6, 12, and 18Z) can be redistributed at all.
>Both Brian and the fellow I talked to from EUMETSAT seemed pretty
>confident that the data could be distributed after a certain number of
>hours (Brian said 3), but the EUMETSAT web site gives the rationale for
>restricting the data as WMO Resolution 40, and that doesn't (IF I am
>remembering correctly) does not talk about time delays at all.  Hopefully,
>I will get word back from EUMETSAT that will clarify the situation.

I do know the Dundee site is one of the few that has METEOSAT-5
imagery..also a funny thing if you go to ftp://ftp.ncep.noaa.gov
and go to pub/data/images/satellite you can get hourly
METEOSAT imagery in McIDAS area format.  Does the 6 hour
rule not apply to them?  This whole thing of data availability
gets me irritated.  I remember one Unidata site that had to shut down
their archive (SUNY??) for a while because Ireland sent him
a nastygram because he had synoptic obs for Ireland
on the site..man that's some valuable stuff,  synoptic obs
from Ireland.  If you feel that comment isn't proper for
the archive please delete it..but it's the truth.

re: NSBF ADDE server
I hope to open it up later this month..depending on several factors.
Hopefully it will be useful.

Robert