Happy Holidays from FSU; Alden and FSU are both operating on skeleton crews so
progress has been slow but we have had the Alden feed now for a few days and are
somewhat satisfied with it. The resolution problem on surface files has been solved
and the quality is equal to that on the images provided by Unisys. However, Alden
is still sending surface maps with 1/4" of the map at the top or bottom cut
off, which is an annoying problem but not too serious I suppose. Other maps are
coming in under their ZFX numbers reliably (available on the Unidata home page is a
nice schedule with the old difax # and the new IDD sequence number/file name).
However, some upper level maps (at least, and maybe others?) seem to have a reduced
resolution compared to their counterparts from Unisys. They are still better than
the Okidata print outs, (we are using a laser printer), but the files from Unisys
(like 200 mb chart) appear to be at approximately 50% better resolution in at least
one direction.
Some things to watch for...the file names (like 2003.g3) that come in may
repeat as often as every 6 hours; therefore scheduling/automating/archiving?
the conversion and print-outs of some of these things will cause some
consternation on the part of the end-user; we are trying to tackle that issue
now. We will share what we can on our anonymous ftp server in the Difax area
in terms of comparisons, scripts, etc. Expect satellite feed to go down soon I
suppose.
Thanks to Harry and David (don't they own a fruit company too?) and Larry and
the UPC staff from Andy Devanas and myself at FSU. You and others have all
helped us to figure out how this is going to work. And thanks to Alden, too,
who I gather is venturing out into new territory!
Paul Ruscher / FSU Meteorology