Grib news (28 Dec 2002)
This is an irregular newsletter about grib weather data from Saildocs. You can subscribe, and a copy will be sent whenever there is an update- see below.
New news:
Sailmail now handles grib files up to 30K for members who have upgraded their (PTC-II-family) modems to Pactor-3. For Pactor-2 users, the maximum size is 10K. For information about using P-3 with Sailmail, send an email to P3info@saildocs.com, and for detailed upgrade instructions send an email to P3upgrade@saildocs.com.
Airmail now includes a graphical grib-request window, from ver 3.0.897 (15 Nov approx). Open the Window
/Catalog menu, select Saildocs then Grib files. On the map, use the cursor to "drag" a selection rectangle for the lat-lon area of interest. Use the zoom in/out buttons and slider bars to adjsut the display, and drag the edges as desired. Check the stat's, and change the options if desired. Then click the "Request" or "Subscribe" buttons to format the request-message and post it for sending. This is available for Sailmail or Winlink.
Old news:
An update to Airmail's grib-viewer (Viewfax) is available as of 10/5/2002, this adds pressure contours (isobars) and resolves some problems with resizing grib windows. Additionally, gribs which cross 0-degress longitude are now displayed correctly (the map is "split" at 180 whenever a grib crosses zero).
Changes have also been made to Saildocs' grib server to correct a similar poblem with grib-requests which spanned zero degrees. (Proponents of the flat-earth theory were not surprised that the world had an edge, the only question was why zero rather than 180. That simply shows our reluctance to split our favorite ocean).
Airmail's Viewfax viewer program now displays grib files (as well as a variety of graphics formats for fax charts). Grib files are binary data files containing weather data (typically surface wind and pressure) in a gridded format, available from Saildocs and other sources.
The Viewer download is available from www.airmail2000.com, follow the link to the downloads page, Airmail-3, then Gribs/weather-fax. Download size is around 400k. There is no help-file yet, but the menus and buttons are hopefully self-explanatory and there is a "readme" note which pops up in Airmail.
Information on Saildocs is available by sending an email to info@saildocs.com (or requesting the document code "info").
Detailed information on requesting grib files via saildocs is available via email to gribinfo@saildocs.com (document code "gribinfo").
This newsletter is document code "gribnews".
Any of these documents can be subscribed to in the usual fashion, by sending an email to query@saildocs.com with the following message:
subscribe gribnews days=90
This will enter a subscription for "gribnews" for 90 days (the default is 14). The document will be sent once, and then not again until it is updated. (All Saildocs subscriptions work this way). You can cancel anytime by sending the message "cancel gribnews" (or whatever the correct code is).
Good sailing and thanks for the support!
Jim Corenman
saildocs@siriuscyber.net