templates and fixed forecast times for different runs

[Bill Bua]

Hey Austin --

(long time no see!)

Anyway, I want to be able to examine the forecast error at a fixed forecast
time from different runs, and look at that error in a time series based on
the forecast INITIAL time, rather than the forecast VALID time), compared to
the analysis for the GFS (I'll use f00 for the forecast times).  The first
forecast was from 00z24Jan2008, the last will be the latest forecast (hence
the large number of times in tdef, and the 6 hour time interval representing
the time interval between forecast initial times).

Wouldn't I want ONE .ctl and .idx file with the template set up to look at
the initial time for each forecast run?  I figured this would allow me to
look at all the variables at a particular lead time (f06, f12, f18, f24, f30
and so on) sequentially by forecast run times, so that I could get my time
series of forecasts to compare to the verification (and then get my RMS
error time series).

Does that help explain what I'm attempting to do?

Thanks for helping me clarify ...

Bill