It gets way worse !!
Let me just say upfront that I have all the respect in the world for some of the folks who have posted on this thread, especially Assaf (did Assaf ever actually make a post? ).
That being said, I would simply like to present a problem that is more serious, but related to, what this thread has addressed. I too use the wonderful GPS features constantly, and have also noticed the discrepency in the GPS formats. All my Uniden scanners as well as Freescan allow selecting which GPS format. I have tried every combination of every setting, without success.
HERE IS THE MORE SERIOUS ISSUE: Freescan obviously converts (internally) between the different formats from one screen to the other, since they are indeed represented in different formats on different screens. There is also obviously some rounding involved due to the conversions. THE PROBLEM IS THAT FREESCAN CONSIDERS 60' AND 60" TO BE VALID NUMBERS, BUT THE SCANNER WILL NOT ACCEPT THEM. The scanner ends up entering zeroes intead of the invalid number, rendering the GPS feature 'broken' for those systems or sites that happen to contain a 60 after the conversion takes place. Since the number I first entered was in decimal format it did not matter at that point, and after the conversion it is not apparent that the problem exists, since there is no separator between minutes and seconds. For example, 116.232607 is valid, but 116.236072 is not.
The question still remained whether the problem was with Uniden or Freescan. Then I thought of it this way... what is the time-of-day one minute after 3:59? Is it 3:60? Nope, it's 4:00. Yes, there are 60 minutes, but the valid numbers are 0-59. Uniden could certainly have handled this error-condition better than entering zeros and giving no indication of any problem, but I have to admit that the root problem would have to be with Freescan.
Also, every time I go to the screen with the map and then back, another conversion (and rounding) has taken place, so the exact same number that worked previously might have now changed to something that no longer works. The same issue is true for LAT and LON. I can't say how many times I have been dozens if not hundreds of miles from home, and finally realized that I should be hearing some system, but I am not. Upon messing with the scanner while traveling, I noted zeros in one of the fields. I spent many hours trying to figure out how this was happening before identifying the actual problem.
Being an Embedded Software Programmer by profession, I realize that problems such as this happen quite often, and can be very difficult to troubleshoot. Even after several years of living with this issue, I have never felt compelled to complain, and in fact have always been appreciative of Assaf and his software. I DID want to report it, but was always afraid of offending someone by using the wrong words. After coming across this thread, I can see than common courtesy is not something that most of you give a damn about, so this is my 2 cents worth. Let me assure you that I have put many more hours into troubleshooting this than most of you smart-asses put into your offensive and irrelevent replies.
I have always imagined that if I could think of the right words to use and reported it in the right way that Assaf would appreciate all the work I had put into narrowing down this problem to this level. I still hope that it turns out to be the case.
Once again, thank you Assaf for the many hours you must have spent writing this wonderful software, and your unbelievable generosity in making it freeware.
Brent Christensen
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