20040411: IDD Data Availability (cont.)

>From: "Rob Dale" <address@hidden>
>Organization: Skywatch Services
>Keywords: 200404092020.i39KKUCT029700 IDD .com

Hi Rob,

re: non-mainstream sites being fed from Unidata universities
>Thanks... I was not aware of that.

OK.

>Here's the situation:
>
>I'm not sure if you are familiar with EMWIN but it is somewhat of a
>'watered down' version of the DDS/PPS feed primarily concentrating on
>emergency products intended geared towards Emergency Managers / Skywarn
>/ local public safety / schools / etc.

I am somewhat familiar with EMWIN.

>It runs at 9600 baud and is
>mainly distributed by satellite (GOES-E/W) for systems that cost around
>$1500-2000.
>
>There is now an effort to take the EMWIN feed and put it on the
>Internet. A Windows version has been available for some time but it is
>highly unreliable. Others are now developing Linux servers to do the
>same.
>
>My concern is that a lot of effort is being put into something which at
>initial glance duplicates the work done on LDM/IDD and only delivers a
>small subset of text data -- ignoring the possibilities of delivering
>all NWS text products (not even digging into gridfiles / text MOS /
>radar / etc.)
>
>From what you are saying -- there would be no problem in
>me rounding up a few universities to feed 'master' volunteer sites
>(commercial or not) who then would pass it out publicly?

It is not our business to advise you to embark on such a venture.
Unidata has no interest in competing with the commercial sector for
your data business.

The following is a personal opinion.  It is not a position of Unidata:

It seems pretty obvious to me that any commercial outfit could setup
their own IDD for data that they can receive free-of-charge from a
NOAAPORT reception system.  Given the NWS movement towards a DVB-S
broadcast of NOAAPORT data, and given that putting together a DVB-S
ingest system costs very little money (I put together a system based on
a surplused PC and a NOVRA S75 DVB-S receiver for less than $500), I
would think that commercial sites might be more interested in putting
up their own NOAAPORT reception systems than in getting data feeds
through the Internet.  At the same time, however, it may be the case
that reception of the NOAAPORT broadcast would be a problem for some
sites given that it is C-band.  Way back when Unidata universities
operated satellite ingest systems for the Family of Services feeds,
lots of terrestrial interference (TI) problems were encountered.  The
phone companies and US military both use C-band for communications in
frequencies that were very close to the FOS broadcast.  In one case,
signal jamming by the US Navy made data reception impossible.  That
site was only able to work around the problem by installing an
expensive tuned cavity filter on their satellite dish.

>I understand
>the lack of support issue - my concern has been the datafeed.

Support is one of our biggest concerns since it is time consuming and
typically takes away time we have for doing new software development.
At the same time, however, we pride ourselves in the support we
provide our community.

>I understand NLDN and ACARS would be off limits, but are any other of
>the feedtypes restricted?

Yes.  FNMOC, GEM, and WSI.  There may be others that are offered on a
point-to-point feed basis (like other feeds from NOAA/FSL) that would
also be restricted.

>What feed would be the one I'd most likely be
>looking for off the bat -- IDS|DDPLUS?

I would think that the IDS|DDPLUS content would be very attractive
given that it contains the set of global observations from the GTS
that the NWS considered to be most important to get to the US
forecast offices.

>Has there been any work on a Windows version of LDM?

No, there has been no effort spent in developing an LDM-6 version that
would run natively under Windows.

It could well be the case, however, that the LDM would work under
Unix-like environments for Windows such as Cygwin, VMWare, Microsoft's
Services for Unix, etc.  Since we have not tried to run the LDM under
any of these, we can't say if they work or not.  My comment comes from
knowledge that community members have been successful in getting
packages like GEMPAK and McIDAS to work in one or more of these
environments.  This sounds like an investigation that, if successful,
would be interesting to the growing community of LDM users.  Please let
us and the LDM community of users know what you learn :-)

Cheers,

Tom
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