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» Online Classroom   » Marine Weather   » Public Discussion of Marine Weather   » Ship Reports email autoresponder

   
Author Topic: Ship Reports email autoresponder
zacman


 - posted November 20, 2018 11:35 AM      Profile for zacman           Edit/Delete Post 
Hi,

I've been reading your blog posts and I like this idea of having a saved history of reports vs expedition's which is gone after closing or updating. I will try using this service, thanks for setting it up.

Is there any chance that buoy reports could also be part of this? One stop shop for all the observations would make it great.

I actually tried to set up some sort of email agent responder like this but alas I am not a good programmer [Wink] I was interested in seeing if I could get another way to download the NAM grib since expeditions interface with NOAA seems to break often. I was going to download the grib locally and have the autoresponder chop it up based on lat / long box. Saildocs does this for the GFS but not for NAM even though no one would download it via radio, just email. I sent an email to them about this but never got a response.

Anyways, thanks for publishing your blog and some helpful items, I read it often looking for new tips or tricks.

From: San Diego, CA
David Burch


 - posted November 21, 2018 09:23 AM      Profile for David Burch           Edit/Delete Post 
Thanks for your note Zac.

We can look into including the buoys, but we did not include that because mariners can get the buoy data on their own with an email request to Saildocs or NWS FTPmail…. So there is some virtue in keeping these services separate.

I can also tell you how to structure an email request of your own that will get you all of these together. I will try to get to that later today. Then you can just save it and change the Lat-Lon values for use elsewhere. It might take two emails. I have to think on it some.

Saildocs does offer NAM data, though strangely it is not referenced anywhere but in our own textbook. It is the 12 km NAM not the 3 km. Also keep in mind a tremendous service of saildocs is you can get past data up to 30 days old. Not older. We cover this in our text as well, but it must be in their own instructions at saildocs.com

Frankly the best source of all GRIB formatted data, hands down, without exception, is LuckGriib. If you do not have a Mac, then you can use their iPad or iPhone version, and then move the data files from mobile device to Expedition or elsewhere.

Thanks again for your notes and kind words.

PS for those not familiar with what we are talking about, here is a note on our free shipreports service and here a link to our Navigation Blog.

From: Starpath, Seattle, WA
David Burch


 - posted November 21, 2018 10:15 AM      Profile for David Burch           Edit/Delete Post 
Well... it turns out that on page 191 of our textbook Modern Marine Weather, 3rd Ed, we explain how to make an email to saildocs to get ship reports and buoy+station reports. It will take two emails if you want ships and buoys, but you can customize the requests many ways, and then reuse them. Also you can send "subscriptions" to saildocs, so the reports are then sent to you automatically (say 4 times a day for a week) without new requests.

This is essentially what we are doing with our ship reports email service; we just automate it by removing some of the options you have if you do it on your own... plus some issues of formating the pages and so on.

From: Starpath, Seattle, WA
zacman


 - posted November 30, 2018 08:34 AM      Profile for zacman           Edit/Delete Post 
David,

Thanks for following up with so much detail. I have not read your book but looks like it is a great reference I will have to check out.

Thanks,

-Z

From: San Diego, CA


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