AWIPS Build 5.2.1 D2D software release notes

New bugs

• If there are two template files in .../Grid/SBN/netCDF/CONUS211/RUC (e.g. one named template and the other template.orig), LAPS will fail to run. [??] [DR9562]

New features

• Radar items:
• Volume Browser:
  • Model soundings are available. At WFOs, those processed include all soundings that fall within the Regional scale; at RFCs, those on the RFC scale; and at National Centers, all soundings. (The Time Options toggle introduced in 5.1.1 gives you flexible access to subsets of the data, when more than 32 time projections are available.)
    From the Surface menu in a submenu titled "Sounding-derived plots," you can display plots of surface parameters or a map of the available sounding locations. A map showing all possible (localized) sounding locations is new on the Maps menu.
    Sounding display (skew-T) is via the Volume Browser.
• On the File menu, Capture Window... invokes an interface to save a copy of the display.
• Non-FSL work that affects the UI:
  • A new lightning plot puts positive strokes in one color and negative in another (15 minute accumulation).

Improvements

• Volume Browser:
  • 12km Eta grids 218 and 242 (AK), Alaska mesoEta grids 216 and 217, and the Alaska Wave Model (grid 239) are now available. (Added as a 5.2.1 patch.)
• Radar items:
  • Eight-bit (256-level) reflectivity and velocity products are added to the menu.
  • The "Radar graphics Controls" function has been renamed "Icon graphics Controls."
• Radar archive:
• WarnGen items:
• Product Maker items:
• The data monitor now includes AVN, Eta, NGM, and RUC soundings in the Point category. (Only Eta soundings are currently sent on the SBN.)

Bug fixes

New bugs

• Occasionally, when you finish using the Alert Requst, and click Send/Exit, a red-banner message appears indicating that the application terminated abnormally. In fact, the request has been sent as expected. [DR8946]
• After editing a skew-T and selecting Lift Parcel, computed parameters change, as you would expect. However, if you click Lift Parcel again, without making any other changes, the values change again. [DR8339]
• If you edit a skew-T and lift the parcel, then select Undo from the Edit menu, the display will change to reflect the undo, but when you select Lift Parcel again, the undone change will not be reflected. [DR8341]

Old bugs

• The default load mode (Valid Time Sequence or Latest Model Run) is restored after a swap, instead of whatever mode you had set when that information was in the large pane.
• Once you're in 4-panel mode, you stay there until explicitly Clearing the screen. If you select products on a different scale, you'll get the same thing loaded in each panel.
• Samples on skewT charts include a degree sign in front of K.
• If you turn lat/lon readout on, then bring up a skewT and sample it, you'll get lat/lon info for the previously displayed map (in addition to the chart information that you want). The pop-up correctly does not include the lat/lon toggle button, so you can't turn it off.
• Sounding plots are computing bad wet-bulb zero heights near the surface when there should be no wet-bulb zero crossing.
• The Product Maker provides access to satellite images only on the Northern Hemisphere, CONUS, and Regional scales.
• If you select MSLP as the field in the Product Maker, you must select a(ny) pressure level, in order to display it.
• When as1 fails over to as2, you see a red banner that tells you so, and says that you may need to restart in order to continue to get auto update and product time updates on the menus. In fact, this is not necessarily the case. To minimize the disruption for restarts, you should monitor radar or other frequently-updated products to see if you are getting notification of new products (display or menu update). Only if not should you restart the workstation.
• A torn-away Product Maker Source menu does not respond to scale changes. This can lead to one selecting a model source that is invalid for the scale.
• This is not really a bug, but the way the alert area request application works may be a little confusing.

  The alert area request can display/edit only two areas at a time, one Area 1 and one Area 2. They can be for the same radar or, for those sites that have more than one dedicated connection, for different radars. For example, you can use Area 1 for radar A and Area 2 for radar B. However, if you start with Area 1 for radar A and then try to display/edit Area 1 for radar B it won't work; you must first clear the display and select another radar if you want to display/edit another Area 1.

New features

Improvements

Bug fixes

New or remaining bugs

• When you add a text window, the main text window GUI does not resize to show the new button. You have to resize it yourself. [DR8205]
• If you select Load History on a text window in which no products have been loaded, all you see is a single dash (the tear-away line). If you select that, the window will crash. The button stays in place, but if you select it, you'll get a Tcl error dialog indicating that the window is gone. You can start a new window from the File menu, and it will occupy this space, though the number indicated on the title bar will not match the button number. [DR9000]
• If you tear away the Load History menu containing products, then select a product, the product selected is from the line above the one you clicked. There is no way to select the item at the top of the list. If you have the menu open and load additional products, the first time almost fixes the problem, but subsequent loads make it worse. [DR9852]
• The WarnGen window occasionally doesn't pop up automatically. Workaround: Request WRKWGx from any window. (The warning expiration reminder won't work in this case.)
• The text subsystem still uses 3-character station IDs. As a result, the Help function in the browser and the button-2 popup station ID info on METAR messages can't distinguish between Kxxx and Pxxx. Usually, both are shown, leaving it to the user to figure out which one applies.
• Like many other products, pilot reports come in a collective and are stored under the site ID instead of your local CCC. Thus, a pilot report referenced to DHN would be stored as BHMPIRDHN. Some erroneously get stored by 2-letter state ID under your local CCC, e.g., PIRAK. Most of the latter are duplicated in the site-ID style.
• The "ss.NNN" construct does not work.

New features

Improvements

Bug fixes

New bugs

• It is possible for the publishing process on the LDAD server to miss notification of a product arrival from AWIPS. In this case, the product will never get published (unlike most decoders, which check their input directory to catch missed notices). [DR9174]
• When using the menu configurator (Web Dissemination), if you expand menus to see submenus and the resulting menu structure becomes longer than will fit on the display, you'll find that you can't scroll down to see the items off the bottom. Instead, you'll have to collapse some submenus to bring what you want back on the screen. [DR9176]

This page is maintained by Joe Wakefield.

Last modified: 6 Aug 02