20020514: RTNOWRAD/2KM navigation off

>From: "Fingerhut, William A" <address@hidden>
>Organization: Lyndon State College
>Keywords: 200205141627.g4EGRMa27544 McIDAS ADDE NOWrad (tm)

>Tom,
>
>I noticed something strange while looking at some RTNOWRAD/2KM images.
>
>I'm using McIDAS 7.6 (will upgrade very soon).
>Data is from motherlode,
>       DATALOC ADD RTNOWRAD ADDE.UCAR.EDU
>This is confirmed by DATALOC LIST.

Since the NOWrad imagery is proprietary to WSI, you must not access it
from sites that are not your own.  I seem to recall showing the products
to several folks a long time ago to illustrate accessing remote datasets
by ADDE.  I also recall admonishing those folks that this particular
data is must be purchased from WSI Corporation.  Because of this, I
must ask you to stop accessing those data.

Do not dispair, however.  Please read on for a substitute for this
dataset.

>If I use the F-key menu: 
>   go to Latest Images Menu
>   go to NOWrad Images Menu
>   select 2 km Master Sector
>
>No problem, I think. The image is displayed.

I think that the navigation for the images has changed recently or
something I did in a supporting routine for my ADDE servers is messing
up the navigation for the NOWrad images.

Given that we have gone a different direction for composite imagery, I
am not enthusiastic about trying to figure out and fix the navigation
problem for the NOWrad imagery.

>The issue is that when I repeat this procedure, except select the User
>Defined Load
>and change the blowup factor, the radar echoes are displayed at a
>different geographic 
>location. These two displays place the same radar echoe over different
>states.
>
>Can you reproduce this or shed some light on the issue?

I think that either the navigation changed in the imagery, or the ADDE
server for that data is unhappy about changes made to supporting
routines that are also used by the GINI and NEXRAD servers.

Now, on to a replacement for the imagery.  Unidata is now sending
several image composites in the FNEXRAD IDD stream:

Descriptor  Product                    Decoded file size  Frequency    Feed
-----------+--------------------------+------------------+------------+--------
10KRCM-NAT  10 km national RCM           166880 bytes     30      min  FNEXRAD
6KN0R-NAT   6 km national N0R            401280 bytes     7 - 10  min  FNEXRAD
1KN0R-NAT   1 km national N0R          14208533 bytes     10 - 15 min  FNEXRAD
2KN1P-NAT   2 km national 1-hr precip   3552533 bytes     7 - 10  min  FNEXRAD
4KNTP-NAT   4 km national total precip   888533 bytes     7 - 10  min  FNEXRAD

All of these images are available by ADDE from the set of cooperating community
servers that also provide access to a variety of other datasets:

pscwx.plymouth.edu
atm.geo.nsf.gov
cacimbo.ggy.uga.edu
papagayo.unl.edu
stratus.al.noaa.gov
adde.ucar.edu

All of the products are contained in an ADDE dataset named NEXRCOMP:

NEXRCOMP/10KRCM-NAT
NEXRCOMP/6KN0R-NAT
NEXRCOMP/1KN0R-NAT
NEXRCOMP/2KN1P-NAT
NEXRCOMP/4KNTP-NAT

Within the next day or two, I will be announcing the availability of
these products to the IDD community and also releasing a new addendum
for McIDAS-X 7.8 (7.806).  The new addendum will have new or modified
ehancements that are designed to be used with the products, and updated
ADDE servers for hosting the imagery on users' local machine(s).

To get a flavor for what the imagery looks like, please do the following:

o download the new/reworked enhancements from anonymous FTP on our FTP server,
  ftp.unidata.ucar.edu:

  <login as 'mcidas'>
  cd data
  ftp ftp.unidata.ucar.edu
    <user> anonymous
    <pass> your email address
    cd pub/mcidas/data
    binary
    get BREF24.ET
    get BREF24.ST
    get MDR.ET
    get PRE1.ET
    get PRET.ET
    quit

o point at one of the cooperating community servers for the data in your
  McIDAS-X session:

  DATALOC ADD NEXRCOMP pscwx.plymouth.edu

o load the images.  I especially like the following sequence:

  SF 1
  IMGDISP NEXRCOMP/1KN0R-NAT STA=TWX MAG=-5 EU=BREF24 REFRESH='EG;MAP H'

  SF 2
  IMGDISP NEXRCOMP/1KN0R-NAT LATLON=42 77 MAG=1 EU=BREF24 REFRESH='EG;MAP X 5 
NAME=OUTLCNTY;MAP H 1'

  I didn't include the BAR labeling of the imagery since it BAR had to
  be updated (in 7.805) to support the 1km N0R, 2km N1P, and 4km NTP
  composites.

Tom