6.3. Basic Radar Altimetry Toolbox Frequently Asked Questions

Is it possible to do an ASCII dump of a data file using the toolbox?
Version 2 and over include an "export" button in the Operations tab. It will enable you to dump your chosen fields in an txt file.

Is it possible to compute geostrophic currents with the toolbox?
Yes, since the v3.0.0 (released on February 16, 2011), an algorithm is available to compute geostrophic currents in the toolbox. See the Data uses case on this topic: Geostrophic velocities.

Must I do all those clicks to process a series of files?
If you want to process the same Operation on a series of files (typically, over all the passes within a cycle, or in all cycles from one satellite), you'd better use the "command line mode" rather than the GUI.
What you can do is define the operation using the GUI; then, go into the workspace 'Operations' folder, and take the ".par" file corresponding to your operation.
Replace the (e.g.) cycle number by an index, and then make a script to loop on this index. Examples for Windows and Linux are given in the User Manual, section 6.1

I've got strange results with along-track plots averaging several files (e.g. the same pass at several times); it is as if the data are not averaged but mixed one after the other
Altimetry satellites repeat their ground track very precisely, but NOT exactly (to within 1 km, typically). So, from one cycle to the other, the location in longitude and/or latitude of a measure varies. If you really want to average those, you have to round the latitude (or longitude) field in X (use the rnd(field,nb of digit) function).
More broadly, whenever you want to compare two along-track data in a Y=F(X) Operation, rounding the field used as X down to the number of significant digits (e.g. "rnd(lat,4)") may be interesting: Double Real formats may lead to slightly different values when the computer process them (you will have e.g. 6.54820000001 or 6.54819999999 for the same number (6.5482), which is enough to consider the locations as different)
The question is different with maps, since the processing is automatically binning the data using the defined resolution.