Rich- If you look at time zone maps for the planet, sometimes they follow a straight line, and often times they don't. While I agree you could make this an automatic feature, in reality it is impractical.

 

That's interesting, when Sledge made the same trip that I did, his HCH's Nav/clock did auto-update, or at least that's what he says.

 

I think he's probably mistaken, I have also used GPS/NAV units for years & I have never seen one that automatically set the time zone either.

I would have to check to be sure, but not only do I have the Eclipse double DIN unit in the dash of my 06 FEH but I also have three Garmin portables & I don't believe any of them do the TZ automatically.

My Eclipse unit is made by Fijitsu 10 & they are owned by Toyota/Lexus. The Eclipse is exactly the same unit that some Lexus 330's came with as a $4000 factory option (I paid $980 for it brand new on ebay & installed it myself).............

~John

 

It is hard for me to believe the signal is that bad in a place like Fresno, but moving the antenna to the roof would certainly help. The Ford factory location for the antenna (behind the radio, way down in the dash) is the stupidest decision I have ever seen.

When I installed my Eclipse unit, I used the new antenna that came with it & put it on top of the dash in the far left corner & it works perfectly there (if it didn't, I was planning to move it to the roof like my Sirius antenna).

When I still had the awful factory NAV installed there where plenty of places it didn't work correctly, but it wasn't because the antenna didn't work -it was because the unit was claiming the map coverage was incomplete in the area I was traveling in (that happened on the very first trip I used it on & I removed it shortly after that). I have since made that exact same trip with the Eclipse & not only was the map coverage just fine, it gave me three different routes to choose from (shortest, quickest, scenic route etc etc). The routes vary depending on what type of roads you tell it are acceptable (toll or no toll, tunnels acceptable etc etc etc)

~John

 

gpsman1 — Maybe you would be able to answer a question that I have about the GPS system. Does the system work internally in SI (metric) units of meters and kilometers for distance, or is it based on US units of miles? I've noticed some strange roundoff errors in my Alpine "Blackbird" GPS unit when displaying readings in SI units, and I'm wondering if this could be due to just such a cause.

Stan

 

GPS is really just the most accurate clock money can buy.
The GPS unit is really measuring time. Nanoseconds between multiple signals really.

So I would have to say the raw data is neither Metric, nor English.
How each individual manufacturer uses the time data is up to them.

-John