We don't read .pck Vector files

[dnowacki-usgs]

CC @rmallen86

We don't currently read .pck files in the Vector workflow. Should we?

[rallen-usgs]

Possibly... the nortek manual says "the *.pck contains the probe check data" - for the vector, in the data I'm looking at, it has 5 columns: sample, distance (mm), amp beam 1 (counts), amp beam 2 (counts), amp beam 3 (counts). It's a bit hard to interpret, because it doesn't have a burst count, but assuming that everything works right it shows you (1) if the beams are all behaving the same and (2) where the bottom is, if it's within the range where it's looking. So, for a 30 cmab downward looking vector, we get this (mid deployment):

The interesting thing that this shows is an increase in amplitude in the 290-300 mm distance, which corresponds to the 30 cm above bed where the instrument was deployed.

I think it's not necessarily what we'll want to look at regularly, but I'm guessing it's worth it to include since we're working through the vector anyway...

[dnowacki-usgs]

Interesting, so it seems to be something like the raw data that is interpreted to generate lines 15-24 in the .vhd file? But without the start/end part since it seems like this is only generated once per burst (but as you say tough to be sure since there is no burst counter).

VHD file description:

 1   Month                            (1-12)
 2   Day                              (1-31)
 3   Year
 4   Hour                             (0-23)
 5   Minute                           (0-59)
 6   Second                           (0-59)
 7   Burst counter
 8   No of velocity samples
 9   Noise amplitude (Beam1)          (counts)
10   Noise amplitude (Beam2)          (counts)
11   Noise amplitude (Beam3)          (counts)
12   Noise correlation (Beam1)        (%)
13   Noise correlation (Beam2)        (%)
14   Noise correlation (Beam3)        (%)
15   Dist from probe - start (Beam1)  (counts)
16   Dist from probe - start (Beam2)  (counts)
17   Dist from probe - start (Beam3)  (counts)
18   Dist from probe - start (Avg)    (mm)
19   Dist from s.vol - start (Avg)    (mm)
20   Dist from probe - end (Beam1)    (counts)
21   Dist from probe - end (Beam2)    (counts)
22   Dist from probe - end (Beam3)    (counts)
23   Dist from probe - end (Avg)      (mm)
24   Dist from s.vol - end (Avg)      (mm)

[rallen-usgs]

I think that's right. The manual says "The *.vhd contains the Velocity header data - the data that is collected during the very first second when running Continuous mode, or at the start and end of each Burst."

Big picture - maybe the pck file is useful, but it does not feel like a priority.