I am not sure it's a given that satellite time and UTC time will always be exactly the same........
I am pretty sure a good timepiece watch will probably hold sub second accuracy, once set, for quite some time.
jn1,
Further back on this thread, your very subject came up, about page 9 I think.
I did a 100km with the watch yesterday. It had about 1/4 of bar of battery life left at the end. 100km is more than enough for me. My inner battery will run out before the watches battery.
Beat you John, I did 120km on Tuesday, but I charged the unit up over lunch and board change. I had 2 bars left when I came in.
But it was far from a good distance day I was on the water for about 8 hrs, enough time to do well over 200kms.
Does this mean my internal battery will get better as I get older. Your a champion Mike. I was ready to go in at 78kms, but I thought I'd might as well bring up my century. I didn't really enjoy it.
I think on distance days I'll carry my GT31 as well and just use the GW60 when going for a casual sail with no PB's in mind.
It is my understanding that GPS time, although extremely precise, is not necessarily the same as UTC time.
To get UTC time a correction to GPS time may be needed to allow for the fact that GPS time has been running since the GPS system was initiated and UTC time has had numerous 'leap' second corrections. I think GPS time does get some corrections as well, but it does not nesassarily stay exactly up to date with UTC time.
Many of us have seen the 15 seconds difference between time stamps on various GPS's. Some have UTC corrections and some don't.
As Mat says, there are also some GPS chips that prioritise timing accuracy output for various scientific uses.
Status of Firmware upgrade:
Development and testing of the upgraded firmware has finished. Locosys are currently updating the operating manual and utility to suit.
The new functionality includes:
1) 4 speed genie screens that shows both the latest run compared to the top result for the session for the disciplines of your choice. Disciplines you can choose from are Max, 2 Sec, 10 sec, @500, 100m, 250m, 500m
2) Option to turn off 1 or 2 of the speed genie screens
3) An optional 5th speed genie screen that displays session distance, which can be displayed in either kms or Nm independent to the unit chosen for speed disciplines.
4) An optional 6th speed genie screen that displays the Time
5) Display by button touch of your top 5 x 10sec speeds and average in small and large font format
6) Display by button touch of your top results in all disciplines in both small and large font format
7) The ability to use the timer and stop watch while in GPS mode
8) A horizontal bar displayed in GPS mode that shows how much the set time in the timer has expired
9) The screen reverses colour when the timer expires
10) A Streamlined delete function
11) An optimized LCM screen redraw driver
12) Display by button touch of 2 GPS satelite reception screens
The public release of the new firmware is now in the hands of Locosys
Sorry guys, here's a real tease, the trial release of the new utility.
the new feature have been added to settings. Auto sleep can be toggled off and on AVG NSEC is best for 10s as before because that's used for the 5XNsec result. the AVG MSEC is best for 2s as that doesn'te get a 5x average screen.
With the 4 RSLT adjustments I've set !A to 2s split screen, with last run and session best. If instead of "TOP" in the second selection I'd had "MSEC" it would be a single large font display of 2s, same for the 10s and alpha. But the 4A/4B 500m selection I've turned off to make faster scrolling, by selecting the "X" option, this is also available for 3A/3B. The "O" in RSLT DIST and RSLT TIME turns these windows on, they join scrolling action with the RSLT 1AB to 4AB. Then there's the unit to use for the distance read out. On the log data screen, there's a "quick log clear" button and it works very well!
Don't forget the 24hours clock-mode Really a perfect job by Locosys and the test-team !! Can't wait to see this version public !!!
I used the new utility this morning, downloading my session from yesterday. It works really well. I like the way you can save your settings configuration with the "Backup CFG" function.
Just had an email from Locosys, the public release of the new firmware will be on their website next week.
In the meantime it's here.https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10480954/GW60/GW60AR_Pack0314B_PR.rar
I'm not sure if the manual has been finished for the mods, so please post any questions here.
The watch is now very versatile, but more options make it more complicated to set up. And everybody will probably prefer slightly different set ups.
Due to hardware limitations, the watch can't do Nautical Miles or Hours, and the Alpha has a minimum length of 300m. If your alpha is processed by software with no min length you'll still get valid alphas under 300m, but they won't show up on the watch display.
Another limitation at the moment is the speed genie setting, for the alpha display you need to set it under the alpha min speed. This means it doesn't hold the "last run" numbers once you go over that speed. So optimally there needs to be two speed genie numbers, one in between the upwind and downwind speed sailing speeds, the other lower than your min alpha speed. This isn't possible with the watch as it currently is, so the number has to be changed depending on what you want.
I've found in practice I leave mine on 10kts, If I think I've had a good speed run, I stop at the end of the run to check. If it just isn't alpha conditions, then I might change it to 25/27 knots.
If in doubt try the settings I have above, and customise from there. The "BACKUP CFG" button will back up this config, so you can change what you want, and if it doesn't work just hit the "RESTORE CFG" button.
Thanks John. My son Fergus just updated both our watches to the latest firmwear. OMG what a huge upgrade. I have been thinking the watch was OK but not brilliant. This is a big step forward, great work.....