Meteo mail

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Revision as of 07:12, 18 December 2013

OVERVIEW

The best way to download the meteo products supplied from the Weather Service of many Nations is to make a Internet connection. In coastal navigation this is easy and not expensive, but to equip a boat to have a Internet connection in offshore navigation is a very expensive matter. For that and other reasons the recreational boats which navigate offshore have on board the SSB (MF/HF) radio. To the links SSB Radio and HF Radio at Sea you can know the technical details involved in installation and use of this type of long distance radio. Here a very pratical discussion with reference to the meteo products of the USA National Weather Service (NWS) and how to download them using the SSB radio. The reason of NWS choice as an example is my personal good knowledge of these products. With them you can navigate in all North Atlantic (and I think also Pacific, but I don't have personnaly experimented) with a super knowledgement of the weather and weather forecasts. To download a product (a file) with SSB radio is a little different from a normal Internet connection: you send by radio an e-mail to the remote server and the server answer with the file you need.

AIRMAIL SOFTWARE

The most used software for connect your on board computer via SSB Radio and Pactor Modem to the server of NWS is Airmail in both version: Winlink or Sailmail, the first is reserved to the Radio Hams and the connection is free, the second is for all but there is some costs. Inside the software there is a wide catalogue of products, a lot come from NWS and if the product you need is present, sending an e-mail to ask for dowload is a problem of two or three mouse clicks. But not all the products are inside and to download them these pages can be very useful. With the Airmail software you can also make a connection to exchange e-mails with Satellitar Phone. Airmail works also like a standard mail "client" software (for example Outlook), you can exchange e-mail (to receive and to send) from your gmail account or from other provider's accounts. Another usage of Airmail is to get GRIB Files a very powerful computerized method for download automatic generated wheather charts: situation and forecasts.

USA NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE (NWS)

How to know the products ? The NWS ftp server and NOAA server are at your disposal, with Internet access you can go inside the directories and go down and up like in your computer...before to navigate the sea a good rule would be to navigate inside this server ... but now we have only the SSB Radio, then:

First ask for the NWS Mail Help file

Send an e-mail to: [email protected]
Subject Line: Put anything you like
Body: help

After some minutes (or seconds) the server replays sending you the file ftpmail.txt.

With Internet access you can reach the same file with this link weather.noaa.gov/pub/fax/ftpmail.txt.

NWS ATLANTIC RADIOFAX PRODUCTS

Inside this help file there is an index of products for type and for regions, try to download the index of NWS Atlantic Radiofax Products. This file contains the same meteo products which are broadcast from Boston MA Coast Guard Station:

Body of the mail:

open
cd fax
get rfaxatl.txt
quit

With Internet access you can reach the same file with this link weather.noaa.gov/pub/fax/rfaxatl.txt.

Inside the text of rfaxatl.txt there are a lot of product. The most importants, in my opinion, in a transatlantic navigations from Europe to USA and return and along the USA East Cost are:

Surface Analysis Chart, Part 2, 40W-95W Northern Hemisphere: PYAA12.TIF
24HR Surface Chart VT12Z Forecast 40W-98W Northern Hemisphere: PPAE10.TIF
48HR Surface Chart VT12Z Forecast 10E-95W Northern Hemisphere: QDTM10.TIF
96HR Surface Chart VT12Z Forecast 10E-95W Northern Hemisphere: PWAM99.TIF
Tropical Cyclone Danger Area* (Most Current): PWEK11.TIF

to download via mail (pay attention to lower case, upper case letters!):

open
cd fax
get PYAA12.TIF
get PPAE10.TIF
get QDTM10.TIF
get PWEK11.TIF
quit

With Internet access you can reach the same files with this link weather.noaa.gov/pub/fax/PYAA12.TIF
...
With Internet access you can reach the same files with this link weather.noaa.gov/pub/fax/PWEK11.TIF

NWS COASTAL FORECASTS FOR THE ATLANTIC ZONE

Now download the index of Coastal Forecasts for the Atlantic Zone: marine5.txt

open
cd fax
get marine5.txt
quit

inside marine5.txt we can read the file's name for the Forecasts of New York Harbour: anz338.txt and the directory's name, to download:

open
cd data
cd forecasts
cd marine
cd coastal
cd an
get anz338.txt
quit

With Internet access you can reach marine5.txt with this link weather.noaa.gov/pub/fax/marine5.txt

and anz338.txt with this link weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/forecasts/marine/coastal/an/anz338.txt

CONCLUSION

I have presented some examples, just to explain the method, now go on yourselves to find and to download the products you need.

NOTE

The server used to download the file with the Internet access is http://weather.noaa.gov/pub, the server to which we have sent the e-mails is ftp://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov. Beyond theoretical consideration I have pratically noted that the first works better with the Internet access. In any case it is also possible to use the second. The directories's hierarchy of the two server is the same (or the server is the same with two different link ? I am not a computer expert).