After double clicking on Vcal.exe you will come to a black screen with a menu. "Press any key to start" so do that takes you to a menu Top says "Make a Vaishnava Calendar" so click on there and enter. Then it will ask you where you want to send the calendar Present means the directory where the program is stored, or you have other options A:/ B:/ etc

Then it will ask you how many towns you want to make the calendar for, this is because originally it was made for all Iskcon temples around the world and hundreds of calendars with their individual longitude and latitude and time zone could be made all at once.

You chose Only One Town and hit enter

Type in your town and year, ie Auck2003  (could write Auck23  or Auck034...as you like, play with it see what works)

This will take you to the Town file list.

Scroll down until you find Auckland

If it's not there hit esc and start again at the menu but this time Work with Townfile, and that will allow you to enter any longitude and latitude and time zone  that you want to do calendars for.

Once you have your town hit enter. This will then ask Whole year or some months.

How this works is that if you want to just look at a few months or even a month then go for the some months option. This is useful if you are travelling to another time zone and want to take a calendar to observe ekadasis and festivals etc. For the whole year option bear in mind that our year begins after Gaura Purnima in February-March of any given year.

Then type in the year that you want the calendar made for ie 2003 and hit enter, and it will ask How many years "Enter number years" so you may want one year or two, and hit enter. Then it will ask you if everything is correct and show a screen with all information that you have put in. If correct hit enter.

Just to confirm it will ask if you want to start calculations now.

And it will do it's stuff.....all the math charts will flash before your eyes as in seconds it will make the calendar and adjust for Purushottam adhika mase, and then let you know what the file is called and where to find it. Hit enter, and it takes you back to the main menu.

Now to reclaim that file I've found it best to open Word2000 and go to the directory that it told where the file is stored. Scroll down and open it as a text file. You may need to adjust the size a little depending on your settings. That can be easily done by looking at Print Preview. I've found that this calendar is best viewed using Courier New font size 9 or 10, any bigger and it goes all wrong, smaller it is difficult to read.

Print it out and now  you have a great reference to all calendar events. If you want to find out more about each of the events in detail then go to my page www.hknet.org.nz/CalendarWhosWho-page.htm and scroll down to your chosen year, enter, and scroll down to your chosen date  and have a look.

I hope this makes like easier for you.