[daip] Trouble Loading VLBA data into aips

[Eric Greisen]

Melissa Pastorius wrote:
> Hi Eric,
> 
> I hope you are doing well. 
> 
> I am trying to upload a data set (BS142, PI Sarma) into aips using fitld 
> and I receive the following error:
> 
>  >FITLD1: Create BS142L1     .UVDATA.   2 (UV)  on disk  4  cno    4
> FITLD1: Warning: table type OB is of zero length
> *FITLD1: TAPIO: RECORD LENGTH   2112 INCONSISTENT WITH BLOCK SIZE  2880*
> FITLD1: ERROR     10 RETURNED FROM FITRXU
> FITLD1: Purports to die of UNNATURAL causes
> FITLD1: localhos 31DEC10 TST: Cpu=     26.0  Real=    359  IO=       174
> 
> I have talked to the archive specialist and he thought I may have 
> downloaded the data before it was complete. He went ahead and downloaded 
> the data and then told me when I could try to download. I received the 
> same error after the 3rd attempt. 
> 
> I was wondering if you might have any suggestion that might help me.

First suggestion is to look at the file on disk with ls -l and see what 
its length in bytes is.  Take that number and divide by 2880.  My guess 
is that the result will not be an integer although FITS files are 
required to be an integer*2880 bytes.  This suggests that something has 
gone wrong with the creation of the FITS file or its copying.  Some 
versions of ftp do not do a "binary" copy unless told to do so.  These 
will then add bytes to the byte stream assuming that carriage-return 
bytes need a line feed!

Eric Greisen