Hi Jeff I just used the wrf_ems program from noaa's strc to create ARW grib1 and it work !!! I can now view the data with PCgridds32, so one can use gfs or nam as initial files and afterwards run ARW or NMM on ones pc. Afterwards you can use pcgridds/gempak/grads to view.
Obviosly one will get more grib data than the standard gfs or nam from Noaa and you can run nested grids.
Here's a pic from the ARW output.
cheers
marck
