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Re: 19991012: McIDAS installation help? (cont.)

Tom,

re: Kavorus 1 km radar imagery
> So, you are indirectly working for Kavorus?  This sounds like a pretty
> "funny" setup for getting the MNG product to sites.  What is the arrangement
> that you have with Duke Power and Kavorus to do this?

OK. I wanted a 48 color mosaic, but DTN/Kavouras didn't want to spend
$2K to put a machine on the Internet (and WSI is unwilling to provide
one). But, Mike Dross at Duke Power Co.  has a machine where the MNG data
is received via satellite and then, by using the LDM, is relayed to
various machines throughout his office. So I asked him if he'd be willing
to provide the MNG's through him. He agreed.

We set up an agreement through e-mail that DTN/Kavouras would relay the
data through him, and then sent to Mike's machine to me. Then, I would
relay it to other schools who wanted it. Duke's weather office is a 24/7
operation, so if there is a problem with the machine, they know how to fix
it (and I have a phone number to call to give them a "heads up" if they
miss it). If they lose the ingest machine, they are dead in the water, and
they need it up constantly for operational use. It almost never goes down,
and when it does, it gets fixed pronto!

We tested the feed for one month here for reliability (August
15-September 15, roughly). Over that month, the data was out for 5 hours;
2 was my fault (I shut down the Kavouras feed by accident, 3 was when they
were upgrading their backbone). Outside of that, every data piece has come
through timely. he does have two backup machines so in case one fails, the
data will keep on coming, should their be a problem.

So, the agreement basically states that if Mike has a problem, they'll do
their best to fix it, but they are not liable for problems on their end.
Operational since Oct. 1 at 12:00 AM, we have had no outages whatsoever,
where as we have had outages with WSI...due to a fiber cable cut and a
server crash on their end during Floyd. THAT stunk, but we had the live
MNG's during that, so we were able to get nice radar mosaics in real-time.

The cost is $150/month, one year contract. Given the better resolution and
48 color capability (as well as much better ground clutter supression),
I am thrilled with it so far.

I expect that, on occasion, there WILL be problems. But if an extended
outage is apparent, they have FTP capability of the data, which they
actually recommended I do in the first place. I turned it down, citing
the LDM method of transfer as my desired way of transferring the data.
I can legally give you a test feed, or sample imagery, if you want to see
it.

Anything else? Thanks again..I really appreciate this and feel free to
advertise widely that my machine is now an ADDE server to the community.

Gilbert