20020620: ingesting NEXRCOMP FNEXRAD products and displaying them in McIDAS (cont.)

>From: Gilbert Sebenste <address@hidden>
>Organization: NIU
>Keywords: 200206182234.g5IMYN621495 McIDAS-X 7.8 NEXRCOMP ADDE

Gilbert,

>Check out my ldmd.conf on weather2. I *think* that's what I need to grab
>the McIDAS stuff without getting all the other NIDS products. That might
>save me from the wrath of the sysadmins.

Your action:

request FNEXRAD ".*\rad/NEXRCOMP/*" flood.atmos.uiuc.edu

is not the one I would have used, but it works.  You could just have
easily used:

request FNEXRAD "^rad" flood.atmos.uiuc.edu

To get the composites in GINI format AND the composites in AREA format,
you could have used:

request FNEXRAD "^(rad|pnga2area)" flood.atmos.uiuc.edu

For reference, the breakdown in which composites are which:

NEXRCOMP         Composite       Decoded
Descriptor      Description      format
-----------+--------------------+---------------
1KN0R-NAT    1 km National N0R   GINI
2KN1P-NAT    2 km National N1P   GINI
4KN1P-NAT    4 km National NTP   GINI
6KN0R-NAT    6 km National N0R   AREA
10KRCM-NAT  10 km National RCM   AREA

Admittedly, if one is getting the 1KN0R-NAT product, s/he really has
no need for the 6KN0R-NAT product.  The reason for the existence of
the 6KN0R-NAT product is it may be all that some sites can handle
since it is _much_ smaller than the 1KN0R-NAT product.

Finally, you can always check up on your request action(s) by using
the LDM command 'notifyme'.  The following invocation of notifyme
will show you all of the products your machine received in the FNEXRAD feed
in the past hour (3600 seconds):

<run as 'ldm'>
notifyme -vxl- -f FNEXRAD -o 3600

If the list of products is what you wanted, you are set.  If not, you 
need to adjust your request line and then stop and restart your LDM.

>Second, in regards to scripts for the radar, GINIRAD.BAT does this:
>
>http://weather2.admin.niu.edu/radar/gini/
>
>A definite work in progress...thanks again for all the help!

I have some recommendations on the web images you are creating:

o make them larger.  This is done by specifying the '-f' flag with
  values on the script's mcenv invocation.  For instance, to create
  one frame that is 600x800, the mcenv invocation would look like
  'mcenv -f 1@600x800'

o change the county outline color from magenta to gray; it makes for a much
  more subdued display.  You may even decide that the display with subdued
  countly outlines is clear enough to let you stop making two GIFs (tm)
  for each view

o stop making the state outlines double width.  This looks clunky for
  the versions that don't have county outlines.

o set the '-g' flag on the scripts mcenv invocation to increase the numbers
  of graphic levels to 32 (e.g., 'mcenv -g 32 << EOF'.  This will result
  in the bottom label showing up in white instead of the magenta you hafe
  now.  While you are at it, you may want to bump up the number of image
  display levels.  The mcenv invocation with all of the suggested
  changes would look like 'mcenv -f 1@600x800 -g 32 -i 128 << EOF'.

Tom