Fast Tide Users Manual


Description.
Fast Tide is a perpetual tide prediction program providing a graphics display of 
tide level over a sixty (60) hr. period. Tide prediction data is provided for most 
primary tide stations throughout the USA, Canada and Mexico as well as a few in 
Australia and the South seas. The user can enter local offsets for up to forty 
secondary tide stations. Tide tables and displays at any of these stations for the 
years 1995 through 1999 can be constructed with the current version. Future data 
upgrades will allow its use through the year 2020 and beyond.

In addition to tide information the graphic display also includes a view of the phase 
of the noon on the date selected. 

Requirements.
Fast Tide is a DOS application but can be run easily from windows. It requires 
approximately 128 Kb of RAM memory and a VGA (640x480x16) graphics 
display. A numeric processor is an asset but not a requirement.

Operation.
Startup.
At startup, Fast Tide displays the tides for the location and offset in-use at the time 
the program was last terminated. The date and Time-Line of the display is set 
equal to that of the computers clock.

Graphic display controls.

F1 - Previous Day  - Used to move the display back in time by approximately one 
day.

F2 -This Day  - Used to return the display back to the date and time indicated by 
the computer clock.

F3 - Next Day  - Used to advance the display approximately one day beyond its 
present setting.

F4 - Any Day  - Used to set the display to start at any day of the year.
Note - The year entered must be the same as the year selected for the current 
selected location.






F5 - Height Scale  - The vertical scale (tide height in feet) can be changed  by 
toggling this control. There are four full scale setting : 3, 6, 12 and 24 feet. 
Note - The program automatically set the height scale based on the tidal range 
for the selected location . This control will override that selection.

F6 - Time Scale  - The horizontal scale (time in hours) can be toggled between 30 
hours and 60 hours.

F9 - Quit Tide - Use this control to exit Fast Tide.

F10 - Option Menu 

1) Select location - In this option the program asks first for the year of interest. 
Entries of  95, 96, 97, 98 or 99 are valid. Next the program presents a list of sixty 
six locations from which to choose. If a data file has been previously generated for 
the selected year, that stations listing  is highlighted. Selecting a highlighted 
station provides immediate access to its tidal data. If you select a station which is 
not highlighted, the program will inform you that No file exists for this location 
and ask Do you wish to generate a file (y) or (n) ?. a no response will take you 
back to the main tide display with no changes. A yes response will start the file 
generation process. This process is computationally intensive and will require some 
time if you have a slow CPU and no numeric processor. The generation time will 
vary from more than 10 minutes for a low end system to less than 15 seconds on a 
100 MHz Pentium processor.

2) View and or print high/low tides. - This option allows the user to enter a range 
of dates. The program will generate a listing of the times of high and low water at 
the currently selected site (including the effects of any local offset) over the period 
entered.

3) Change the time zone to daylight time. or
3) Change the time zone to standard time. -  This option toggles between the 
display of local time as either standard or daylight savings time.

4) Select local offset correction. - This option allows the selection of an offset to 
the times of high and low water at locations other than the primary tide station . 
The user is presented with a list of available local offset locations (if any). These 
local offsets are not supplied with Fast Tide but must be created by the user (see 
option 5 below). Data for these offsets can be obtained from local marine 
stores/marinas or tide tables at your local library.


5) Edit/Create local offset corrections. - The user is provided with a text editor 
screen consisting of  forty lines of texts (normally blank). Each line makes up one 
offset entry. Each line consists of three elements, time correction for high tide, 
time correction for low tide and a name for identification of the location. Each of 
these elements must be separated from the other with at least two spaces and must 
be kept in the following order from left to right.
                                    high      low       name
Both the high and low corrections are given in hours and minutes as follows : hmm
examples :
For a correction to add 2 hr. and 7 min. to the tide you would enter 207.
For a correction to add 9 min., the entry would be 9.

  57 = add 57 min.
-23 = subtract 23 min.
156 = add 1 hr and 56 min.

The maximum time correction allowed is Nine hours and fifty nine minutes (959). 
ID names can be in any form. Use your imagination.

6) Create compressed graphics file (FASTIDE.GIF ). - This option allows the user 
to save the graphic tide display on disk as a GIF file. The file is placed in the home 
director for Fast Tide and is named FASTIDE.GIF. If there is data previously 
stored in FASTIDE.GIF it is over written without warning.

Arrow Keys  - The Arrow Keys are used to move the Time-Line (red vertical line) 
horizontally across the display to facilitate relating  time, with tide level. The red 
annotation line (below the Time-Line) provides a digital display of the time and 
tide level as determined by the position Time-Line. Date and time zone (standard 
or daylight) are also given on this line.
Note : The up and down arrow keys will also move the Time-Line horizontally but 
in finer increments.

In case of trouble
Please address inquirers to :   JBANDLE@AWOD.COM 
