20020227: Using UW Archive Data With McIDAS

>From: "Patrick O'Reilly" <address@hidden>
>Organization: University of Northern Iowa
>Keywords: 200202272300.g1RN0Ux01190 Unidata-Wisconsin archive

Patrick,

>I recently received a bit of archive data from SSEC at UW (*.sfctxt,
>*.sfcobs and *.raobman) and would like to use McIDAS to view the data.
>Is it as simple as selecting LOCAL DATA for the type of data, and making
>sure that where the data lies is in your MCPATH?  Or, do I need to
>re-name the types of files that I listed above?

For the POINT kinds of data that you grabbed, you will need to rename
the files (or make links to them) using standard McIDAS MDXXnnnn names
(MDXX0001 - MDXX9999).  Be careful to not name them using any of the
names used for the realtime data you are ingesting/decoding.  These are
files in with names MDXX0001 - MDXX0110.  Choosing a number range in
the 1, 2, ..., up to 7 thousands (e.g., 1000 - 7999) would most likely
not clash with any other MD file names on your system.  The thing you
need to do after that is either put the renamed files in one of your
MCPATH directories (preferably your MCDATA directory) or setup McIDAS
file REDIRECTions for the files.  For instance, if you put the files in
/data/casestudies/dec2000 and selected the MD file number range 2000 -
2xxx, then the following REDIRECT command would setup the necessary
access:

REDIRECT ADD MDXX2* "/data/casestudies/dec2000

After doing things like this, check to see that you can access the file(s)
using the DMAP command:

DMAP MDXX2

>I saw a bit of
>documentation on this, but it only spoke of satellite data and
>referenced version 7.6 while I have 7.8.

ADDE access to satellite data is more flexible than access to MDXX or
GRID data.  For satellite data, you don't have to rename the files
(although they must still be uncompressed).  All you have to do is
setup an ADDE dataset and specify the file(s) full pathname with a
regular expression as the value of the DIRFILE= keyword of DSSERVE.
For instance, if your GOES-West IR images were named
20011220_*_goesw.ir you could setup an ADDE dataset that points at
these images using DSSERVE:

DSSERVE ADD DEC2000/GW-IR AREA DIRFILE=/data/casestudies/dec2000/*goesw.ir 
"GOES West 10.7 um satellite images

>Thanks for your assistance!

You are welcome.

Tom