[Xastir] faster radar image updates?

[Eric K Germann]

Just an observation from a Skywarn symposium I attended.

One of the NWS guys had the opportunity to work on the phased array
systems.  While a cool technology, he indicated he had problems taking
in all the data it could generate.  So not only the infrastructure, but
the way of thinking in assimilating this data apparently needs some
upgrading.

Not belittling him by any stretch of the means, but it was an
interesting observation that they needed to rethink what they look at in
light of lots more data coming in.

He did seem to indicate phased array out here in flyover country was
most likely 10 years off.  Given that NWS North Webster (KIWX) got the
very last WSR-88D I believe, I think we're in for the long haul.

On another note, he said some group was working on lower resolution
imaging mounted on cell towers.  Anyone heard anything along those
lines.  Seemed like it was a "higheer density, lower resolution"
solution for fill in imaging.  That sounded kind of interesting ...


Gerry Creager wrote:
> Couple of additions/corrections.
> 
> NWS is progressing with "super-resolution" (250m) software on the
> WSR-88D systems, and has been for several months. Little fanfare goes
> into that.  However, the lower-resolution Level III data that most
> mosaics come from is going to remain at 1 km resolution.
> 
> RIDGE radar is in an evaluation period to transform ALL their pages to
> Level II and these will have super-res where/when it's available.
> Super-res comes at a couple of costs, though.
> 
> 1.  Some platforms cannot tolerate increased rotation speed.  These will
> require up to 7 min to complete a volume scan.  A new volume scanning
> profile will give 0.5 deg elevations more frequently.
> 2.  Some radars will tolerate higher RPM scanning.  These will complete
> a volume scan every 5 min in storm/precip mode.  These, too, will scan
> at the lowest elevation several time in a "surveillence" sweep while
> acquiring a volume scan.
> 3.  Super-res is larger data, making processing take longer.
> 4.  The new software build changed the file naming process complicating
> regular expression parsing and making their capture and decoding more
> "interesting".
> 5.  NWS is upgrading both the path to the regions from the individual
> radar sites from 56k to 128k to accommodate the larger files.
> 6.  NWS is reconfiguring the network that handles the radar data to
> distribute it and to get it to the National Climatic Data Center to a
> higher-bandwidth Qwest path.
> 
> And, the file size increase is also a bit more than 16x... there's more
> elevations in the standard volume scan for Build 10, providing better
> resolution in vertical slicing too.
> 
> gerry
> 
> Brian Webster wrote:
>> In most areas of the country no. The reason being that the mechanical
>> radar
>> units take at least 5 minutes to complete a sweep. I attended a skywarn
>> meeting this winter and NOAA/NWS will be upgrading to phased Radar
>> antenna
>> arrays with electronic sweep actions thus eliminating the mechanical
>> delay
>> and also giving them the ability to quickly look at problem areas when
>> needed. The resolution per pixel will also increase to 1/4 square
>> kilometer,
>> now the pixels are 1 square km. The problem with the new resolution is
>> the
>> size of the image files. Most NWS offices don't have enough bandwidth to
>> serve the public with a file size increase of 16 times what they
>> currently
>> dish out.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thank You,
>> Brian N2KGC
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: xastir-bounces at lists.xastir.org
>> [mailto:xastir-bounces at lists.xastir.org]On Behalf Of Jason KG4WSV
>> Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 7:53 PM
>> To: Xastir - APRS client software discussion
>> Subject: [Xastir] faster radar image updates?
>>
>>
>> Looks like the RIDGE radar images only update every 5 minutes or so.
>> Is there a source for more frequently updated radar imagery that can
>> be had in an xastir friendly format?
>>
>> -Jason
>> kg4wsv
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> 

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Eric K Germann
ekgermann (at) cctec (dot) com
419 605 4026

http://www.linkedin.com/in/ericgermann

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"Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and
 his own dying." -- Martin Luther
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