[Aavso-photometry] IRAF photcal -- worth it?

[Michael Koppelman]

Since I am pretty comfortable with IRAF I thought maybe I'd start using 
photcal to do my transformation coefficients. Chuck P. has mentioned 
this in the past. A quick look at the help terrified me:

--> help photcal
digiphot.photcal:
        mkapfile - Prepare  aperture corrections file from 
apphot/daophot output
       mkcatalog - Type in a standard star catalog or observations file
        mkimsets - Prepare an image set file for input to (mk)(n)obsfile
    mk(n)obsfile - Prepare an oservations file from apphot/daophot output
      mkphotcors - Prepare the photometric corrections files
          apfile - Prepare an aperture corrections file from a text file
         obsfile - Prepare an observations file from a text file

        mkconfig - Prepare a configuration file
       chkconfig - Check the configuration file for grammar and syntax 
errors
       fitparams - Compute the parameters of the transformation equations
         evalfit - Compute the standard indices by evaluating the fit
       invertfit - Compute the standard indices by inverting the fit

This looks nightmarishly complex. Currently I use IRAF to do the ccd 
reductions and photometry and then just use perl and Excel to compute 
my coefficients and do transformations on observations.

Do I really want to go through the pain of learning photcal? I reread 
Chuck's Zen of IRAF on the subject and it seems doable but...

Thanks!

Cheers,
Michael Koppelman
http://www.lolife.com/astronomy/