CONFIGURATION - Settings: Location

This page is used to select your geographical location required for dawn/dusk calculations. You must select a location to gain access to the dusk/dawn and series event calculations.

The three radio buttons labeled N. America, Europe and Other select the location data file for each region of the world. The file names of these three regions are NORTHA.DAT, EUROPE.DAT and OTHER.DAT and they must appear with these file names in the same directory as the executable program. These files are text files and you may add your own location to them using the Custom button or a text editor like EPM. The file format is described in each of these files. Note that only the first 100 cities are recognized in each of these files.

The Location selection box shows the city that is currently selected.

The Custom button allows to add your own location to the DAT file. Select a city near your location before you press Custom. This will help you in determining the sign of the time zone and longitude/latitude. When you press Custom, a text window will appear where you can enter the location name. After you have entered the name, set the time zone, longitude and latitude. The newly entered location will be added to the end of the location list and will be displayed in the selection box. Select Store to permanently save the location in the DAT file. You can only store newly added locations and these locations are appended to the DAT file. No alphabetical sorting takes place. Locations with the same name can not be stored. Make certain the data you enter is correct. If you have to delete any entries, it must be done with a text editor. If more than 100 entries exist in the DAT file, a warning will be displayed.

Time Zone, Longitude and Latitude text boxes show the corresponding data of the selected location. This information is pulled directly from the regions of the world DAT file. Time Zone is positive for locations west of GMT and negative for east of GMT. Longitude is positive for west and negative for east locations. Latitude is positive for northern and negative for southern locations. The format is DDD.MMSS where DDD is degrees, MM is minutes and SS is seconds.

The Daylight Savings Time Observed check box must be enabled if your area observes daylight savings time. If you turn this box on, then the program will automatically calculate the dates when DST will be active. The calculation defaults to the first Sunday in April and the fourth Sunday in October. If these dates are not correct for your area, then you can direct edit the dates (click on the text box and type in the date in the format MM-DD-YYYY) and they will be saved in the HOUSE290.INI file.

To save the Location settings, press the SAVE button. The CLOSE button and close window selection on the system menu will only change the settings for the duration of the current HOUSE/290 session.