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>From: Eric Ware <address@hidden> >Organization: Cornell >Keywords: 200403151917.i2FJHtrV028561 IDV rada Hi Eric- >I'm a grad student at Cornell Univ. and am beginning a project on radar rainfa > ll rates. I downloaded binary radar data from NCDC and was told that this da > ta could be viewed using IDV. I decompressed these files and tried to view t > hem from the "files/URL" panel, but there was an error when trying to load th > em. Can I view these binary files, and if so how? Are these Level III files or Level II files? If Level III, we do not read them directly from disk, but can read them through an ADDE server. I'm going to assume that you are using Level II, so instructions follow. 1) If the files are all from the same station, decompress them into one directory. If they are from different stations, then decompress them into different directories. For simplicity, if you use the 4 letter id of the station (i.e. KFTG for the Denver radar), the IDV will guess at the station name. Level II files do not contain the station location information in them. 2) In the Data Source Selector, choose the Radar Data tab and then the Level II tab. Use the file selector to move to the directory where you decompressed the data. If you used the suggested naming convention above for the directory, you should see the correct location listed in the chooser box on the right. If not, select the appropriate station. Choose the files you want to look at and click the OK button. You can select multiple files using the Ctrl key with a mouse click on each file. 3) Once you have loaded the files into the Data Selector, you can select the DataSource and then choose the way you want to display the fields. What version of IDV are you using? I would suggest using the latest version (1.1b3) if possible since that has the best support for Level II data. Don Murray NOTE: All email exchanges with Unidata User Support are recorded in the Unidata inquiry tracking system and then made publically available through the web. If you do not want to have your interactions made available in this way, you must let us know in each email you send to us.