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2012 Copyright University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

To run the PlanTrack program, copy this directory to your workspace, then run
using './PlanTrack.py [Plan.xxx]' where the argument in brackets is optional
but will load the specified track if it is given.

This program requires:
  *  python 2.6 or later
  *  wxPython package 
  *  matplotlib (for some plots; a version without those plots is available)
  *  numpy (required by matplotlib)
  *  wget (probably available on linux machines)
All are available on tikal.eol.ucar.edu, so the program will run there.
Python and wxPython are available for many platforms including Windows and
Mac as well as linux; see below for suggested sources. The reason that Python 
2.6+ is required is that the 'format' command is used extensively and that 
was not available in earlier versions of python. The package matplotlib is 
a Matlab-like package used to generate some of the (optional) plots.

The coordinates included in the subdirectory 'NavPoints' are a subset of
what is available. More points can be generated easily from the full database
but are not included here. Contact: Al Cooper ([email protected])

The 'Map' menu includes maps that are project-specific. More can be generated 
and added to the menu, and some programs are included in the source directory
to help determine the new coordinate transformations. When I made these maps,
I used 'gimp' to reduce skewness and parallax to make the map projection
closer to rectangular in lat-lon.

The button that starts Google Earth with the .kml file produced by this
program works with linux if google-earth is in the path, and for Windows if
the program is located at 
C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Google Earth\client\googleearth.exe
If not, make a link from that location to the program to get this to work.
This is untested for Macs at present.

I was able to get this to work on a 32-bit Windows machine and also a
64-bit machine running Windows 7, as follows: (The sources I used are
included in the 'PlanFlight.Install' directory.)
  1. Download and install python:
     http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.3/python-2.7.3.msi
     Don't use python-3; that will probably not work.
  2. Download and install wxPython (used by the PlanFlight GUI):
     http://sourceforge.net/projects/wxpython/files/wxPython/2.9.3.1/wxPython2.9-win32-2.9.3.1-py27.exe
     Be sure to match the Python version; see 'py27' above.
     (accept option to prepare tools at end of install)
  3. Download and install matplotlib:
     http://sourceforge.net/projects/matplotlib/files/matplotlib/matplotlib-1.1.0/matplotlib-1.1.0.win32-py2.7.exe/download
     Again, it is important to match the python version (py2.7)
  4. Download and install numpy:
     http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/files/NumPy/1.6.1/numpy-1.6.1-win32-superpack-python2.7.exe/download
     Ditto re Python version.
  5. Download and install wget.exe on Windows machines. (wget is probably 
     availalable on linux machines.) A possible source is:
     http://users.ugent.be/~bpuype/cgi-bin/fetch.pl?dl=wget/wget.exe
     This program must be placed where a call to execute it will find it,
     for example in C:\Windows on a Windows machine. It is used to fetch
     soundings.
  6. Copy the directory PlanFlight to the windows machine. On EOL machines,
     this is accessible via ~cooperw/PlanFlight; it is also saved as
     ftp://ftp.eol.ucar.edu/pub/temp/users/cooperw/PlanFlightxx.tgz
     where xx is the date of the version. It is also available in the
     EOL SVN repository.
  6. Create link on the desktop to PlanFlight.py in the above directory
  7. Double-click on that link.

It may be necessary to change PlanFlight.py permissions on a linux source 
directory to remove executable permission (i.e., chmod -x PlanFlight.py)
before copying, to see the file. Change them back afterward or the file
won't execute on the linux machine.

The 'Help.txt' file includes additional information on using the program and
on some details or problems with the approach taken.

These files are not used and should be deleted from the archive:
  Sounding.py
  Cursor.py
  Example*.py
  (some others)
They were used for study prior to incorporating the code into PlanFlight.py.