Weak and Compact Radio Emission in Early High-Mass Star Forming Regions:
  I. VLA Observations
  We present a high sensitivity radio continuum survey at 6 and 1.3$\,$cm using
the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array towards a sample of 58 high-mass star
forming regions. Our sample was chosen from dust clumps within infrared dark
clouds with and without IR sources (CMC-IRs, CMCs, respectively), and hot
molecular cores (HMCs), with no previous, or relatively weak radio continuum
detection at the $1\,$mJy level. Due to the improvement in the continuum
sensitivity of the VLA, this survey achieved map rms levels of $\sim$ 3-10
$\mu$Jy beam$^{-1}$ at sub-arcsecond angular resolution. We extracted 70
centimeter continuum sources associated with 1.2$\,$mm dust clumps. Most
sources are weak, compact, and are prime candidates for high-mass protostars.
Detection rates of radio sources associated with the mm dust clumps for CMCs,
CMC-IRs and HMCs are 6$\%$, 53$\%$ and 100$\%$, respectively. This result is
consistent with increasing high-mass star formation activity from CMCs to HMCs.
The radio sources located within HMCs and CMC-IRs occur close to the dust clump
centers with a median offset from it of 12,000$\,$AU and 4,000$\,$AU,
respectively. We calculated 5 - 25$\,$GHz spectral indices using power law fits
and obtain a median value of 0.5 (i.e., flux increasing with frequency),
suggestive of thermal emission from ionized jets. In this paper we describe the
sample, observations, and detections. The analysis and discussion will be
presented in Paper II.
