Robert A. Baxter, Certified Consulting Meteorologist

Key to the evaluation of instruments is having the right tools in the toolbox. Over the years I have developed hardware and software tools that have aided in the performance of my work. For most data analysis I write programs for repetitive tasks with some of those programs placed in my "analysis toolbox" as standard equipment. A partial list of some key software tools is shown below. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have, or to obtain a copy of those tools indicated as freeware.

COMPASS -- A program used to determine solar angles to aid in the alignment of wind sensors. This is the program described on my wind sensor alignment page and is available as freeware. 

TESTFREQ -- A frequency generation program used to evaluate the response of sodars, or to just annoy people. The program will generate a continuous tone, pulsed tone, sliding tone (in frequency) or warbling tone (random frequencies). It runs in a DOS mode and uses calls from Microsoft QuickBasic.  It will run most reliably in pure DOS, but can function to some extent within DOS or command windows in most versions of Microsoft Windows. This program is available as freeware.

APT107 -- The most current version of the pulse transponder software used with the Acoustic Pulse Transponder described in my APT page. This provides the pulse recognition and frequency generation capabilities for the APT hardware, and is highly flexible to program simulated wind shears in testing or auditing of sodars. This software is proprietary.

CNS2CDF -- A universal translating program to convert sodar, radar and RASS consensus formats into a file structure compatible with LapGraph analysis software. The program converts several versions of AeroVironment sodar formats, NOAA/ETL sodar and LAP3000 radar wind and RASS profiler consensus formats. The software is primarily used for analysis of audit data and is proprietary.

MERGECO -- A data merging and display package that combines multiple CO data channels and data streams from GPS and temperature measurements into one display. The program provides numerical and graphical representations of the data and was developed to support CO mapping studies such as the one described in my CO monitoring studies page . The program works through networked computers to handle the needed multiple processes and in conjunction with GPS and CO data acquisition modules. This software is proprietary.

DATAIN, COMPARE , STATCOMP, PLOT -- A suite of programs for the reading, comparison, statistical analysis and plotting of upper-air data sets. The software was designed to handle the analysis of audit or comparison data sets in accordance with the newest EPA guidance for systematic and RMS difference analysis. The software is proprietary, but has also been used by the California Air Resources Board for analysis of rawinsonde, radar wind profiler and RASS data.

PTHSONDE -- Software to process data streams from sonde packages and calculate the profile of virtual temperature for auditing RASS profilers. This is the package used in the sondes described in my innovative sonde techniques page. This software is proprietary.

EXTRACT, TABLE -- Two programs designed to extract monthly data records from a comma delimited data file and generate hourly and daily data surmmaries with minimum, maximum, average, total and frequency distribution statistics suitable data reporting.  This software is proprietary.