Select the radar, time period, beam, required file format and required data fields to convert FITACF file data into selected file formats. The file formats available are CSV, tab-delimited TXT and JSON. The file as default will provide time, date, beam number and channel for each data point, and will supply the list of range gates with fitted data as standard if a vector field is chosen. The table on the FITACF format page of RST shows the description for all data fields. The FITACF 3.0 files converted here use the default options of the RST version 5.0 make_fit command, with the option -fitacf-version 3.0. This conversion tool is limited to converting 24 hours of data at a time. Read more below.

Common Data Fields

Advanced Data Fields

Further Information

The files downloaded on this page will have a file name with the start and end date and time, the radar abbreviation (e.g. sas for Saskatoon) and the beam number, along with a unique file ID for book-keeping purposes. For example, I request a txt file of Saskatoon data from 2021-04-05 between 1pm and 2 pm for beam 8. The generated file name will be: 20210405T130000-20210405T140000_sas-bm8_{10 digit unique identifier}.txt

Inside the files, we continue to use the parameter names from the FITACF file which can be found here.

FITACF files contain only post-processed data range gates which successfully implemented the fitting algorithm to determine physical properties of the backscatter. The FITACF files used in this tool used the FITACF 3.0 algorithm.

If more than one channel was used during the time period of interest, data from channel a(0) will appear first in the file followed in alphabetical order: b(1), c(2), d(3). This means that data may not be in chronological order depending on the CPID!

Comma Separated Variable Files (.csv)

Text Files (.txt)

The text files downloaded on this site consist of a one line header containing the requested parameters. Each line from here will contain the data from one beam at a given time, date and channel. If you have requested vector parameters (i.e. for each range gate within the beam) a field called 'slist' will appear after the date and time to show which range gate numbers had fitted values. The other vector fields will also have the same number of elements, and the index of these elements will correspond to the range gate at the equivalent index in 'slist'. The different parameters are delimited via tabs and the vector parameters are bounded by square brackets.

JavaScript Object Notation Files (.json)

If you are a python user, it is recommended that you download a JSON file as the inbuilt python library, json, will convert the file into a dictionary for you. The files contain, in python notation, a list of dictionaries with keys requested from the above choices including keys for the date and time of each data point.

import ast
import json

with open('path/to/file.json') as f:
    data = json.load(f)

# Output in dictionary form:
print(data)

# Example print the beam number of the first data point
print(data[0]['bmnum'])

# Vectors will require reading literally to convert from 
# strings to lists
slist_list = ast.literal_eval(data[0]['slist'])

                    
import pydarn

file = "path/to/file"
SDarn_read = pydarn.SuperDARNRead(file)

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