What software do you guys use?

[Mike Hardiman]

Hey sina... I think most offices have upgraded to AWIPS 2, so you should just stay with that.

That would be six offices out of 122, and a significant downgrade at this point.

 

[Mike Hardiman]

Has anyone used Pykl3 or Radarscope for Android? If so, which do you prefer and why? They both cost the same and I a trying to decide which to buy. Do both show storm direction and speed? Thanks.

PYKL3 is the reason I bought an Android tablet. I prefer it to Radarscope, which is the only option on my iphone. Pykl3 works great out of the box, but has several options for customizations if you want to dig into menus or config files.

The baseline roads shapefiles are more detailed than Radarscope, which only displays Interstates and US Highways. The baseline roads include several Canadian highways (although it does not differentiate between freeways, 2-lane roads, and rural roads). Although the process is a bit rough, you can override the default road shapefiles.

Pykl3 also includes city labels in Canada and Mexico and is clutter-free. Like the GR apps, you can customize the size and color of the fonts for city and county labels.

Other nice options include optional overlays of METAR sites (which somehow includes West Texas Mesonet stations). The overlays are small and unobtrusive, unlike most GRx placefiles.

You can download or customize color curves for radar products.

There's a sort of quick-toggle button to swap between Z and SRM which can be handy.

There's also a quick-toggle to swap between 4 different product displays. So you can have one display with minimal overlay data, another with storm tracks plotted, another with SpotterNetwork locations plotted, etc.

 

[Windshear Kear]

I use both Radarscope and Pykl3. Love them both. Like the Hi Res on Radar scope.. and the hail estimates of Pykl3. I view them on a Samsung Note. Seems like Pykl3 does better at reloading when theres a weak signal..but Radar scope seems to refresh better when a strong signal is present. Radar just introduced some really good updates. Love the radius measuring option..and the heading cone is awesome!! One thing I've noticed on both is the GPS crosshairs seem to be inaccurate more than they're accurate...especially with a lot of traveling. Once you stop it catches up.

 

[Casey Osburn]

I use GRLevel3 on my laptop, using my Droid3 (that week between the Droid2 and the DroidX, they made the Droid3) as a mobile hotspot. I just recently bought a Globalsat BU353 GPS for my laptop that works great with GRLevel3. Got it just in time for the death ridge we have now...lol.

I have Pykl (however it is spelled) and it is a good backup to GRLevel3 if I don't have my laptop. I prefer to have a bigger screen which is the main reason I don't use mobile radar applications as my primary source. Heard good things about RadarScope but haven't bothered buying it.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

I use GRLevel2 almost exclusively... I find the higher resolution to be critical, and I feel better connected to all of the base data. I often find it necessary to set my own storm motion vector to get good results from the storm relative velocity product, and that can only be done in GRLevel2. Unfortunately the cost goes through the roof if you want the dual pol stuff (GR2AE and the Irix upgrade) but you can get by on vanilla GR2 and GR3 for the dual pol data.

On my i-device I use Radarscope... it's not bad and I like the speed, but the poor resolution of storm relative velocity and the lack of good road data is one of the shortfalls. I may be mistaken but I don't think it has spectrum width, and I use that all the time.

Of course during the pre-convection time I use my own Digital Atmosphere program, plus sites like Al Pietrycha's mesonet-on-steroids plots (for example, http://stormeyes.org/maps/hoss.gif, which is Digital Atmosphere also), as that's critical for finding what the pressure, wind, and moisture fields are doing. I prefer McIDAS for the latest satellite data. McIDAS may be a bit too intensive to use on mobile data laptop connections, though.

 

[Greg Higgins]

GR2AE also allows you to set your own storm motion.