Hi LDM Users,
So a long term annoyance / curiosity continues to get the best of me. 
I figured I would spam the very smart folks on the ldm-users list and hope 
somebody could educate me. Attached you will find a PNS statement from WSH 
that came down our lovely IDD feed on LDM today.
Within the file, you will find the following characters and here's some 
python code showing where its at :)
a = open('PNSWSH.txt').read()
a.find("\x92")
2191
a[2190:2200]
'ts from FAA\x92s \r\r\nTDW'
So it should have been an apostrophe, but it instead appears to be Windows 
CP1252 encoding for "RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK" ?
After much gnashing of teeth and conversations with NWS TOC folks, this 
appears to be some issue with products generated in a Word Processor 
getting saved to a text file without US-ASCII encoding being set during 
the process, so it defaults to some windows encoding?  Or it is some 
copy/paste issue.  The jury never did return a verdict on this and my 
support ticket with the TOC was closed, oye.
I asked Unidata and they did not know. So does anybody here know what 
character encoding is used for text data that come down the IDD?
If you are still reading this, you are probably wondering two things:
 1) why I care.
 2) if I have a life.
Well, this is an important problem when saving these products to a 
database.  See, databases can be sticklers about character encoding and 
often do not accept "garbage in".
If you check out the NWS website, the apostrophe is gone!
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/productview2.php?pil=pnswsh&max=51
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/view/national.php?prod=pns&sid=wsh
There is a large and vast conspiracy afoot!
daryl
--
/**
 * Daryl Herzmann
 * Assistant Scientist -- Iowa Environmental Mesonet
 * http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu
 */
127 
NOUS41 KWBC 201146
PNSWSH
Technical Implementation Notice 13-03
National Weather Service Headquarters Washington DC
646 AM EST Wed Feb 19 2013
To:       Subscribers:
          -Family of Services
          -NOAA Weather Wire Service
          -Emergency Managers Weather Information Network
          -NOAAPORT
          Other NWS partners and NWS employees
From:     Richard J. Vogt
          Director, WSR-88D Radar Operations Center
Subject:  More Frequent Products from 7 Additional FAA
          Terminal Doppler Weather Radars During Hazardous
          Weather Effective February 27, 2013
Effective February 27, 2013, at approximately 1500 Coordinated 
Universal Time (UTC), NWS will more frequent disseminate radar 
products generated by the NWS Supplemental Product Generator 
(SPG) from 7 additional FAA Terminal Doppler Weather Radars 
(TDWRs) during the TDWR hazardous weather mode also known as 
Volume Coverage Pattern 80 (VCP 80). These products will be 
provided via the NWS Radar Product Central Data Collection 
Dissemination Service (RPCCDS) and NOAAPort.
NWS initiated more frequent radar product distribution from  
11 TDWRs on April 12, 2012, (Reference TIN 12-13).  The 7 TDWRs 
added with this notice are listed below: 
Associated WFO   TDWR ID   TDWR FAA SITE NAME (ICAO)
--------------   -------   --------------------------- 
KOUN             TOKC      OKLAHOMA CITY (OKC)
KLWX             TBWI      BALTIMORE (BWI)
KLWX             TDCA      WASHINGTON NATIONAL (DCA)
KLWX             TADW      ANDREWS AFB MD (ADW)
KLWX             TIAD      DULLES (IAD)
KRAH             TRDU      RALEIGH (RDU)
KEAX             TMCI      KANSAS CITY (MCI)
As with other centrally-collected TDWR-SPG products, the products 
from these added sites will be archived at the National Climatic 
Data Center (NCDC). The inventory of the archived products will 
be contained along with other TDWR products under the NEXRAD 
Level III tab at:
  http://hurricane.ncdc.noaa.gov/pls/plhas/has.dsselect
More information about how the NWS generates products from FAA?s 
TDWR data can be found at:
  http://www.roc.noaa.gov/spg/
If you have any questions about the technical content or 
generation of these products, please contact:
  Mike Istok
  michael.istok@xxxxxxxx
If you have questions about the NOAAPort activation of these 
products, please contact:
  Brian Gockel
  brian.gockel@xxxxxxxx
National Technical Implementation Notices are online at: 
  http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/notif.htm
$$