Pat, many of your questions can be answered at the following URL:
http://maps.fsl.noaa.gov/MAPS.rucinfo.cgi
(see message "new page summarizing RUC-2 access from OSO server" by Stan Benjamin).

The RUC-2 is run on a 40km grid that is nested inside the 80km CONUS 212 grid, NOT the old polar-stereo 60km grid of the RUC-1. There are 40 hybrid isentropic-sigma levels in the native grids as opposed to 25 in RUC-1.

You would probably want the standard output on the 93x65x37 80km AWIPS 211 grid (vertical levels are pressure, every 25 mb between 1000mb and 100mb) which include:

height, temperature, relative humidity, u and v components on every level

plus a mean sea level product

plus tropopause level pressure, potential temperature, u and v components

and maximum wind level pressure and u and v components

These files are available every 3 hours from the OSO server, and are identical to the old RUC-1 formats since they are interpolated fields. Hopefully the information in these files is an improvement over the old RUC-1 generated fields, though.

I hope this answers most of your questions, but feel free to ask more-

Tracy Lorraine Smith wearing my "Stan hat" since he's on vacation