[Support #NAB-494698]: Mcidas--Grids not available?

HI Bill,

> Just a real quick question based on your response:  would my problems
> (and your solution of my problems) be easier to address if I upgraded to
> the latest version of Mcidas?  (It was on my list of things to do, but
> obviously got bumped this summer).

Your upgrading would not make any difference as far as me finding out why
the GRID decoding stopped working on adde.ucar.edu.  It would, however, be
beneficial for troubleshooting other problems you might have in the future.
When you should upgrade is dependent on your schedule.  I would suggest,
however, that you might want to wait until sometime next week so you can
do the download after I make some more changes to the distribution.  Then again,
the changes I am going to make will only be important for sites that will
server data through their remote ADDE interface.  Since you are not ingesting
data using the LDM (still the case?), the changes should not affect you.

> If I did upgrade and you still need the info on which grids and params we
> use, I'll have to get back to you tomorrow.

I would still like the info on the RTGRIDS datasets and fields you are using
so I can advise you how to upgrade your processing to use the new ADDE datasets
for model data.

> Over the years, based on availability of data and time of day, we have used
> various of the models, mainly because there were times when some grids didn't
> seem to show up in a  timely fashion or just ceased to stop being filed in the
> data set.  As a small user, we don't file the various models, just make a set
> of forecast maps for the day using whatever product is available.  Certainly 
> not
> the best way to do it, but expedient.

There is nothing wrong in your approach.  Also, your comment about using a
variety of datasets makes sense.  Given this, I can give you the following 
"general"
guideline for conversion to the new datasets:

1) replace every instance of 'RTGRIDS' with 'RTGRIBS'

2) replace RTGRIDS/GFS with RTGRIBS/GFS-ALL
      "    RTGRIDS/NAM with RTGRIBS/NAM-ALL
   etc.

3) for the time being, switch to use of an alternate ADDE server
   for the model data:

   adde.cise-nsf.gov
   idd.unl.edu
   stratus.al.noaa.gov

> Oh oh.  I just checked the list of community ADDE servers.  I see that things
> now look to be GRIB, not GRID.

Yes, this is the transition that I referred to in my first email.

> Clearly the Paleozoic / Mesozoic boundary has been crossed and I have been
> left behind.

My intention was to keep the RTGRID dataset populated on adde.ucar.edu in 
exactly
the same way that it has been for the past several years so that folks like you
would not be caught short by the transition.  My plan failed when the GRID 
decoding
stopped working on adde.ucar.edu.  By the way, a quick check of the setup on
adde.ucar.edu between my first email and this shows that the data should be
decoded, but it isn't.  I am hustling to figure out the decoding is not 
working...

> I just went back and reviewed the release announcement.  Guess I wasn't smart
> enough to figure out what was going to happen, or I would have upgraded. My 
> bad.

No, not your bad.  Again, my intention was to not affect your data access during
the transition.  You would have never noticed a change if the GRID decoding had
not stopped.  My plan was to contact you (and others) to encourage you to 
transition
to the user of the new grid datasets at your leisure.

> Looks like the best thing to do is upgrade, yes?

No, you upgrading will have no impact on the model data processing on 
adde.ucar.edu.
As I said above, however, it should make your life easier down the road if you
run into other problems.

> Oh, and I have turned off any access of RTGRIDS at ADDE.UCAR (or anyplace 
> else).

Please try RTGRIBS access on one of the alternate ADDE servers that I listed
above.

Again, I apologize for the problems!

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: NAB-494698
Department: Support McIDAS
Priority: Normal
Status: Open