Synscan daylight saving?

[Malcolm]

If I input the correct time to the haqndset, why does it ask daylight saving Y/N?

[The Mekon]

Perhaps just a reminder? It annoys me as well. I keep mine on +10h and always input EST.

[Malcolm]

Well I've just put in YES and also input NSW DST so I'll see what happens.

[Wavytone]

Synscan handles this correctly in my experience. If it didn't the result would be a constant offset of 15 degrees in hour angle, which would be rather obvious.

[jimmyh1555]

Presumably the programming was done under American supervision. Perhaps in different countries they have different dates for turning the clocks forwards or backwards. They maybe didn't know when our clocks go forward. For instance, in UK, the clocks don't get adjusted until mid/late October (if I remember right) , so it made sense for each user in whichever country, to tell the computer:)

[Steffen]

The confusion stems from the fact the user is asked for both timezone (GMT offset) and DST flag. A user in NSW, during summer, could enter any of these combinations (together with the wristwatch time):

Timezone +10, DST=YES
Timezone +10, DST=NO
Timezone +11, DST=YES
Timezone +11, DST=NO

Two of them are correct, and it's fairly straightforward to work out which those are. It can still be confusing during setup in the field.

I sidestep the issue altogether, by entering UTC time, timezone +0 and DST=NO at all times of the year :)

[jimmyh1555]

Good idea, Steffen, but pleeese call it GMT like it always has been;)

[Steffen]

Haha, I would if I could, but I'm too OCD for that. My time source (NTP) only delivers UTC, which incorporates modern achievements like leap seconds (something GMT has no concept of). And who'd want to be off by a second (stars drift by up to 15 arc seconds per second!) :D

[jimmyh1555]

Leap seconds???? Crikey, I used to use a sextant and my assistant had the deck watch which I bet wasn't very accurate! Probably lucky to be within a minute.
Maybe that explains why my fixes were never too accurate, but on one occasion I navigated a minesweeper across the Indian Ocean, and we did actually make landfall! Those were the days... Leap seconds? What will they think of next?:shrug:

[Heathcote]

I may have a simplistic view of this but it seems logical. Synscan needs to know UTC/GMT time to accurately know where things are. When you enter the inputs during setup, look at your watch and enter, then YES/NO for DST.