[McIDAS #FZE-547264]: METAR decoder

Hi Kwan,

re: reading SSEC McIDAS documentation, not Unidata's

> I guess I didn't know any better.  (It was the first thing that came up on
> Google search.)

No worries.  (But, I'm pretty sure that I have explained in the past that the
Unidata distribution of McIDAS is slightly different than SSEC's, so reading
our documentation is preferred.)

re:
> I found this Unidata page
> 
> http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas/current/users_guide/InstallingandConfiguringMcIDAS-XCD.html#32415
> 
> I could not find any user's guide on how one may run the decoders though.

The first thing you have to do is build and install the XCD executables.

re:
> In addition, they appear to tie in with LDM and not standalone.  Am I on
> the right direction?

The XCD decoders are indeed best/easiest used in conjunction with the LDM.
A number of years ago, we found it useful to be able to decode "historic" METAR
data, so we made some modifications to the code to support this use.  I am
not remembering exactly how this is done at the moment, but building and
installing the XCD code is definitely the first step.

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: FZE-547264
Department: Support McIDAS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed
===================
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