2. TAF Monitor

2. TAF Monitor
	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 'smart' TAF editor.
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.

2.1. TAF Monitor Window

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.

GUI Elements

Site ID button

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 un-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.

Active Toggle 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.

TAF/MTR Time Labels.

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.

Observation/Guidance Status

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:

METAR

The weather elements under the METAR heading represent a comparison of the current METAR observation with the current TAF. The five items are interpreted as follows:

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.
cat	Flight Category	Alerts on discrepancies in flight categories.

persistence NUM

The weather elements under this heading compare the current TAF for NUM 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.

ltg

The weather element under this heading represents a comparison of the current TAF with the latest data from the lightning detection network.

Number of strikes

This item will display alerts when lightning is observed near the TAF site and TS is not mentioned in the TAF.

rltg

The weather element under this heading represents a comparison of the current TAF with the latest lightning probability guidance. The lightning probabilities are created using algorithms developed for the System for Convective Analysis and Forecasting (SCAN), and they are generated hourly by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). See [[Kitzmiller et al.]]. This guidance is issued every half hour and is valid for 3 hours.

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.

ccfp

The Collaborative Convective Forecast Product is a graphical representation of expected thunderstorm occurance at 2-, 4-, and 6-hours after issuance time. The forecast is disseminated as a text product and stored in AWIPS fxatext database. AvnFPS decodes it, finds whether the monitored TAF sites fall within a convective area and alerts whenever convection parameters: coverage and confidence exceed customized thresholds and there is no thunderstorm in the relevant period(s) of the TAF. See [[CCFP]] for description of the CCFP message.

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.

grid

The gridded forecasts prepared by the Interactive Forecast Preparation System (IFPS) to support the National Digital Forecast Database (See [[NDFD]]). AvnFPS can be used, however, to monitor the consistency of the TAF with the IFPS gridded forecast. The weather elements under this heading compare the current TAF with the IFPS forecasts for the gridpoint nearest the TAF site.

	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.

The guidance prepared by GFE is split into 3 groups:

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.

llws

The weather element under this heading represents a comparison of the current TAF with the latest wind profile data captured from suitably equipped aircraft, or NWS's WSR-88D's or FAA Terminal Doppler Weather Radar's radar products as well as the NOAA Profiler Network.

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 by office and by user, see System Administration Manual, the section called “`etc/gui.cfg`”.

Editor Shortcuts

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.

Common Actions

To view monitoring details:: Hover over the weather element. A popup window will show displaying current TAF, observation/guidance and messages for all violated rules.
To view observations and guidance for a TAF site:: Select the ID button.
To stop the Site ID buttons from blinking:: Right-click the Site ID button.
To change the number of hours used in persistence monitoring:: Right-click on the persistence label, then select the number of hours from the pop-up menu that appears.

2.2. Server Status Indicators

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
	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:

Close: Closes queue viewer.
Refresh: Updates the information in the dialogs. This will not happen automatically; the viewer does not actively monitor log files.
View: Displays the content of the selected file.
Remove: Cancel the transmission of the selected forecast, waiting in the pending queue. Actually removes the selected file.
Retransmit: 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.
Help: Displays short help in a text window.

Note

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”.

2.3. Editor and Product Selection Buttons

Just below the menu bar there are four buttons.

TAF Editor

This button invokes TAF Editor.

Climate

This button invokes Climate Menu GUI, allowing forecaster to see the climatological data in a variety of formats.

Plot

This button displays TAFs, observations and guidance in graphical, time-series format.

Backup

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. AvnFPS, if properly configured, can monitor dozens of TAFs simultaneously. When you select the Backup button, the Product Selection Dialog launches:

Product Selection

	Tip
	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.

2.4. Menu Bar

File

File Menu

Check Now (Alt-f-c): 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.
Restart (Alt-f-e): 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.
Quit (Alt-f-q): Closes the application.

Options

Options Menu

Setup (Alt-o-s)

Can be used to edit forecaster specific configuration file /etc/app-resources/X.N where N is the forecaster ID. See resource editor below.

Alert (Alt-o-a)

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

Blink (Alt-o-b)

If selected, the color circle label will blink on new notification about changing weather conditions.

Help

Help Menu

About (Alt-h-a): Provides version number, and contact information.
Usage (Alt-h-u): Displays online help window.

2.5. Resource Editor

Resource Editor Dialog

This dialogue can be used to edit resource configuration file for each forecaster. 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. Each resource has a 'Reset' button. If pressed, this will return that resource to a baseline value. The 'Restore' button at the top of the Editor, resets all resources to baseline value.

Depending on the resource type it is:

Toggle Button

Used for Boolean values: yes or no (1 or 0 in the configuration file).

Option Menu

Allows selection from predefined values.

Entry

Allows to type in values, such as width and height

Button

Invokes dialogues specific for a given resource. This can be:

File Selection Dialog

Used to select audio file for alerts, resource *playFile

File Selection

Color Chooser Dialog

Alows to set various colors.

Color Chooser

Font Chooser Dialog

Selects fonts from a 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.

	Note
	When viewing guidance, the data will be displayed most effectively using fixed-width fonts. The title "ABCD...1234" will aid you in identifying these types of fonts.