NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Differences between GPS and WWV time
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2001 Jun 22, 5:35 PM
From: Dan Allen
Date: 2001 Jun 22, 5:35 PM
From- Rodney Myrvaagnes Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 12:49 PM To: NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM Subject: Re: Differences between GPS and WWV time Has anyone tested the fixed-mount versions of popular GPS families to see if they are better in this regard? I suspect the answer will be no, but they could take advantage of the ample power available from the boat or car battery. --- Dan Allen replies: --- The behavior of my fixed-mount GPSes is the same as battery-operated ones. As long as they use a low-power and hence low-megahertz ancient 80186-based processor, any GPS will have a hard time doing several of these tasks all at once. (Garmin handhelds use an Intel embedded CPU that is based on the 80186, or at least early Garmins did.) I have asked Garmin to add a feature to their GPSes, a time-only mode where it reads out nothing but accurate time, but they haven't done it. On the bright side, in the Garmin eTrex they originally didn't even show you seconds anywhere! Only hours and minutes. This is crazy in a device that has internally very accurate time from the satellites. I made my case to them in emailed and amazingly enough, just a few weeks later, a new rev of the eTrex software was posted on their website which displayed seconds! One can download the new software and flash the ROM from any PC. If you have a Garmin GPS you should go to their website and see if you have their latest software. Dan
