| 2. TAF Monitor | ||
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 | Chapter 2. User's Guide |  |
| 2. TAF Monitor | ||
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| | Chapter 2. User's Guide | |
The AvnFPS TAF Monitor (aka AvnWatch) serves several functions.
It displays information about the status of background services that are critical for correct functioning of AvnFPS.
It displays results of monitoring TAF forecasts against observations and various guidance sources
It provides access to the various editors that are part of AvnFPS.
It allows you to customize the behavior of AvnFPS.
The image below shows the AvnFPS TAF Monitor.
AvnFPS Monitor
The TAF Monitor Window includes one row of buttons and labels for each TAF site of interest to your office. AvnFPS reviews the latest guidance, forecasts, and observations and reports the results in the color-coded portions of the window. Above the TAF Monitor Window is a row of server status indicators. AvnFPS uses background processes, i.e. servers, running on one or more hosts to accomplish its tasks. The Editor and product selection buttons (on the right-hand side) are arrayed on the Monitor as well. These buttons allow to quickly begin your routine and/or unscheduled product generation tasks. The Menu Bar allows you to access the user configuration tool for AvnWatch. Most of the user configuration items relate to the "look and feel" of AvnWatch on your workstation. Site-level configuration (add/remove a TAF site, change alert criteria) is generally accomplished with a different set of programs.
The message bar at the very bottom shows messages that do not require forecaster intervention (if an intervention is required, a popup dialog is displayed). When a text message is displayed for a short period of time, the label in the left lower corner flashes with color indicating severity of the message, which usually is one of the following (the colors are configurable): green: info, orange: warning, red: error. The time the message is shown depends on the severity and varies between 5 seconds for informational message to 20 seconds for system errors. You can view all messages that have been displayed by pressing the unlabeled button in the right lower corner.
The TAF Monitor Window contains rows of buttons and labels for all the TAF sites that have been configured for your office. Each item provides you with some information about the current TAF and how it compares to observations or guidance. A few of the items act as controls for the monitoring process.
These buttons are on the left-hand side of the TAF Window. These buttons invokes TAF Viewer. Any data that changes colors in the observation/guidance status (see below) causes the Site ID button to blink for 5 minutes (unless disabled). Problematic data, such as TAF containing errors are indicated by an orange background. Missing or non-decodable TAFs or METARs will make the background red. To stop the blinking, or to revert to the default background color, right click on the Site ID button.
The small square between the Site ID Button and the TAF/METAR Time Labels allows you to enable/disable monitoring of a TAF. When the box is selected (yellow), the current TAF for that site will be monitored.
This label displays issuance times of the most recent TAF and METAR. The background color is used to notify the forecaster if one or both reports are late. When the last received report is older than the threshold value, the background changes to orange. The threshold value is 1hr 5min for METARs and 6hr 40 min for TAFs.
For each data source being compared to the TAF, one or more weather elements are monitored, using a set of rules configured by your office. Each element has a dedicated label. These are color coded, green if the element passed all the rules, gray if data were missing, and one of the following colors: pale green, yellow, orange, red and purple if one or more rules were violated. The color of the label suggests the severity of the violated rule with pale green being least severe and purple being most severe. The following data sources are available for monitoring:
| tpo | TEMPO | An alert is displayed for this item if the current TAF contains a TEMPO group and the conditions described in that TEMPO group have not been observed for more than half of the duration of that TEMPO period. |
| wnd | Wind | Alerts on discrepancies in wind speed, direction and, if configured, runway cross- and head-wind components. |
| vsb | Visibility | Alerts on discrepancies in visibility. |
| wx | Weather | Alerts on discrepancies in precipitation and/or obstruction to vision. |
| cig | Ceiling | Alerts on discrepancies in ceiling. |
NUMNUM hours from now with the current METAR
observation. The same rules are applied to the weather elements under this
heading and the METAR heading. In effect, these columns
assess the current TAF against the assumption that conditions in the current
METAR observation will persist for NUM hours. The
value of NUM is selectable: move the mouse over the
'persistence' label and right-click, a popup menu appears which allows you to
select the number of hours. Weather elements and alerts are the same as for
METAR, with the exception of the TEMPO check.
| ts | Number of strikes | This item will display alerts when lightning is observed near the TAF site and TS is not mentioned in the TAF. |
| ts | Lightning probability | This item will display alerts when lightning probabilities are high near the TAF site and TS is not mentioned in the TAF or vice versa. |
| ts | Convection potential | This item will display alerts when convection is forecast, but TS is not mentioned in the TAF. The check is done for all 3 forecast times. |
![[Note]](docbook-images/note.png) | Note |
|---|---|
Remember that the data displayed in the IFPS Guidance Window are generally representative of a larger area (2.5x2.5km2 or 5x5km2, depending on GFE grid resolution) than the TAF. |
| wnd | Wind | Alerts for discrepancies in wind speed and/or wind direction. |
| wx | Weather | Alerts for discrepancies in weather. |
| sky | Sky cover | Alerts for discrepancies in sky cover. |
| ws | Wind shear value | This item will display alerts when wind profile data indicate wind shear is present near the TAF site and wind shear is not mentioned in the TAF |
| Note |
|---|---|
Colors displayed in the weather element labels, data sources and menus are
configurable, see System Administration Manual, the section called “ |
If you have configured AvnFPS to show the Editor Shortcuts (see Section 2.5, “Resource Editor”, the relevant resource is
*amdbuttons), you will see three buttons to the right of the
monitoring indicators. These buttons allow you to quickly launch the TAF Editor to
prepare amended, corrected, or routinely delayed forecasts.
Hover over the weather element. A popup window will show displaying current TAF, observation/guidance and messages for all violated rules.
Select the ID button.
Right-click the Site ID button.
Right-click on the persistence label, then select the number of hours from the pop-up menu that appears.
The Server Status Indicators provide you with important information about AvnFPS' ability to ingest data and transmit products. If one or more of the Server Status Indicators is red, your Aviation focal point or ITO should investigate the cause. If data or ingest servers have failed, the monitoring functions of AvnFPS will be unreliable or fail completely. If the transmission server has failed, AvnFPS will not be able to issue products. Common causes for failures include:
A misconfiguration of system files,
Computer or network maintenance work,
Failures in system software or hardware.
If your aviation focal point and/or ITO is unavailable for assistance, the NCF should be contacted.
![[Tip]](docbook-images/tip.png) | Tip |
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If all indicators are red, then its most likely there is a failure in the local network, and not a problem with AvnFPS per se. Once the network problem is resolved, the aviation focal point or ITO should restart the AvnFPS servers. |
The Queue button to the right of the Server Status Indicators allows you to view and modify the forecast transmission queue, this is the list of products that are waiting for a specific time before they are transmitted. The background color of the Queue button reflects the status of the most recent transmission attempt: green for success, red for failure. Selecting the Queue button launches the AvnFPS Transmission Queue Dialog. A sample Transmission Queue Dialog is shown below:
Transmission Queue Dialog
The top window of the Transmission Queue Dialog, in this image, displays a list of files successfully sent out over the WAN. A set of radio buttons to the left side of window changes the display: you can see products waiting in the queue, 'pending', products successfully disseminated, 'sent', or the 'bad' files - either products that did not go out, or a rogue file that should not have been put in the queue. The bottom window displays the results of all transmission attempts for one day. The row of buttons labelled with the days of the weeks allow you to control the day for which the transmission log is displayed. AvnFPS maintains one week of logs.
The table below describes the actions of the buttons on the top row of the AvnFPS Transmission Queue Dialog:
Closes queue viewer.
Updates the information in the dialogs. This will not happen automatically; the viewer does not actively monitor log files.
Displays the content of the selected file.
Cancel the transmission of the selected forecast, waiting in the pending queue. Actually removes the selected file.
Schedules a forecast for retransmission. The issue, vaid and header times are
not updated. Actually moves the selected file from the
xmit/sent directory to
the xmit/pending directory and updates
the transmission time.
Displays short help in a text window.
| Note |
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If you want to make changes to the forecast in the TAF editor, just reload it. If present in the pending queue, the editor will use that instead. The maximum amount of time the TAF product can remain in the pending queue is a configurable item in the AvnFPS transmission server's configuration file. If this length of time is exceeded, the pending item is moved to the 'bad' directory. For more details on both of these features, see Section 4, “Forecast Transmission”. |
Just below the menu bar there are four buttons.
This button invokes TAF Editor.
This button invokes Climate Menu GUI, allowing forecaster to see the climatological data in a variety of formats.
This button displays TAFs, observations and guidance in graphical, time-series format.
The Backup button can used to monitor a different set of TAFs on-the-fly. This can be useful when backing up other WFOs' TAFs. In some cases, the number of products may be small enough to configure a single instance of AvnFPS to monitor and edit all products issued by both WFOs. When you select the Backup button, the Product Selection Dialog launches:
Product Selection
| Tip |
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If you want to select more than one item from the list, either press and drag the mouse (this works for consecutive items), or click at the items while pressing the Ctrl key. |
File Menu
Normally the checks are done upon reception on notification from avnserver (and every 30 minutes, to deal with TEMPO group verification). This option forces an immediate check of all TAFs versus current observations and guidance sources.
This option shuts down the current instance of AvnFPS and restarts it, like after making a change to your X resource file. The restart option preserves the selection of monitored product(s). You also have a chance to choose a different forecaster id.
Closes the application.
Options Menu
Can be used to edit forecaster specific configuration file
/etc/app-resources/X. where
NN is the forecaster ID. See resource editor below.
Used to select alert criteria when the monitor detects a condition requiring forecaster's action. Alert pops up a dialogue in which you may select severity level for activating particular option.
Alert Dialog
If selected, the color circle label will blink on new notification about changing weather conditions.
Help Menu
Provides version number, and contact information.
Displays online help window.
Resource Editor Dialog
This dialogue can be used to edit resource configuration files for individual forecasters. Within the scrolled window there is a list of configuration resources. Each frame contains name of the resource, you can display a short description in a balloon pop-up window by pointing mouse cursor at the name. Value of the resource is displayed on the right. Depending on the resource type it is:
Used for Boolean values: yes or no (1 or 0 in the configuration file).
Allows selection from predefined values.
Allows to type in values, such as width and height
Invokes dialogues specific for a given resource. This can be:
Used to select audio file for alerts, resource *playFile
File Selection
Alows to set various colors.
Color Chooser
Selects fonts froma list of all fonts available on the system.
Font Chooser
The toggle Short Names resticts the list to font aliases. This significantly shortens the length of displayed fonts and is generally sufficient.
| |  | |
| Chapter 2. User's Guide |  | 3. TAF Editor |