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Very new user to wingridds

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:04 pm
by britbob
Hi,

Just a couple of extremely noob(ish) questions regarding wingridds. By the way, what a fantastic utility this is, thank you Jeff for all your hard work.

Right, just installed it. Yes, I`m going to be document reading later tonight, but of course I have itchy feet and I`m waiting to play.

Opening up wingridds, I downloaded for example the ECMWF 0-160hr from ncep. After 5-10 mins we`re done. Now I figured I would need to convert the downloaded grib so I would converted regular grib data?

This is where I`m getting stuck. When I look in griddata there`s a bunch of files relating to ukmet, eta and the others but no ecmwf.

Can someone give me a brief rundown on getting downloaded grib to display.

Also, I`m lost when it comes to displaying basemaps. I guess I`m stuck in the Digital Atmosphere world where it really was simple point and click!!!

Apologies for the poor spelling, I`m half asleep tonight and with a cold again.

Thanks all.

Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 6:05 pm
by ncwxman
Hi Bob,

If you would please, what exactly is the source of your data (ftp address).

Thank you,

Kevin

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 2:51 am
by jkrob
Bob,

Welcome to WINGRIDDS!! You really should read the first part of the documentation where it walks you through a sample session of WINGRIDDS.

Once you have downloaded your GRIB file(s), you need to ingest them to convert from the GRIB format to PCG (PCGRIDDS - hereditary nomenclature) format. Once you open the converted file, you will see the map display. Since the GRIB file data is 'mapped' to a specific grid projection of the earth, you cannot really choose a mape until the file you want is opened, then the system will do it for you & you can then choose the areal coverage you want.

Good luck & feel free to ask any other question to get you going but, please, read the Users Guide...I went to a lot of trouble for that ;-) If you do have problems understanding anything, please let me know so I can make it more understandable.

Thanks and again, welcome,
Jeff Krob
PCGRIDDS32/WINGRIDDS System Developer

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 2:39 am
by britbob
Ok,

First of many questions I reckon!!

Downloading grib, for the majority of the time whenever I download datasets from the download grib files (regular grib) menu, most are zero in size. If those are dead, is there a better recommended source for reasonably small datasets, the same products as what are in those menus (ie, gfs, nam, cmc, ecmwf)?

I assume also the menu can be edited somewhere in the source files?

Now for my dumb question of the day. With the black background, a lot of the coast and state outlines are very hard to see, is there something that can be done to clarify the coast, state, border outlines? Also, there is no other option but black backgrounds?

That`s me done for a few hours, thankyou. :)

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 3:23 am
by jkrob
Bob,

#1) When a downloaded file has a size of zero, that usually means the download failed. The GRIB download portion of WINGRIDDS is brand new & still in the debugging phase. The NCEP servers seem to be more troublesome than the NWS servers. If you are having problems in that area, for the time being, it may be better to do the download manualy with an FTP client.

#2) The download Menus, scripts & such can be modified. See p.148

#3) The map background color(s) can be changed as well. See p. 145 & 146

Good luck,
Jeff

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 4:29 am
by britbob
Going to do some reading this week. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions :)

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 2:34 pm
by britbob
Jeff,

I`ve fumbled around with the pallete file somewhat and got close to what I was looking for. I can`t seem to change the legend block (or whatever it is called), looks rather odd being a black strip in the corner (see example in link).
http://i93.photobucket.com/albums/l54/bazwxman/ruc1.png

Ideally a white block with black text would be better.

Regarding SAVS, this is a command line function does it grab and save to the windows clipboard, or can it export to a folder of your choice?

Thank you.