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Low cost RTK vs omnistar
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dpilot83
Posted 6/23/2008 12:33 (#403067 - in reply to #402986)
Subject: Re: Low cost RTK vs omnistar



It is not hard to reset your AB line by going off of your previous rows just like you say. I would say one thing to think seriously about is practicing hitting it right on the turns before planting. With the MojoRTK on EZ-Steer this is what was the most challenging for us. We would turn around and might end up a foot off the line. Well, it would take the EZ-Steer/Mojo combination up to 150 feet before it would get that error figured out if you hit it at just the wrong angle and speed. Finally towards the end of planting we figured out that shifting down to third gear, turning sharp enough to stop the inside wheel of the planter and then engaging the EZ-steer well before you had everything straightened out gave the EZ-Steer/Mojo enough time to get centered up before you put the planter back in the ground as long as you left it in third gear which was maybe 3 MPH for  our 2WD JD 4840. I believe there is a good chance that the responsiveness of a different tractor would require different speeds and different timing on when to engage it to make it work perfectly. I guess I'm saying I don't believe the EZ-Steer is something that you can throw a 10 to 12 dollar an hour guy on there and expect to be able to harvest it easily on the end at the end of the year with a header that doesn't match your planter unless the header is half the size of the planter which is the case in our situation. Based off my experience with the EZ-Guide+ and EZ-Steer, I believe you'll run into the same thing if you use the Omnistar HP or XP with an EZ-Guide 500.

As far as whether to use the Omnistar equipped EZ-Guide 500 and EZ-Steer or a MojoRTK system with EZ-Steer, I'd have to say I'm like some of the others on here and after using the MojoRTK I'd really lean towards it. You'll be spending $6000 on the EZ-Guide 500 or $13,000 on the MojoRTK system. So $7,000 extra on the MojoRTK. However, like you said, the OmniStar costs money, I think you said $800 per year? Let's say instead of paying $800 per year in subscriptions, you pay $800 per year in interest on a loan to buy better precision ag stuff. If the money you are borrowing is currently costing you 8%, $800 of interest gets you roughly $10,000 more equipment. Since you're only spending $7000 extra on the MojoRTK and you're getting better accuracy and you don't have to wait half an hour or whatever it is for the Omnistar to converge every time, I feel that would be a better deal.

There are negatives though. Unless you can set the base station whip antenna up high somewhere so the radio can reach all your fields, you'll have to take the base station with you to every field. If you do have somewhere high to put it, you'll have to make sure that you pay Leica for the option that gives you the algorithms to be accurate to the furthest field from your base station (max of 16 miles). If you decide to take the base station with you all the time, it is my opinion that the provided tripod is not amazing. Nor will it work for repeatability because you would have to set the tripod up in the exact same location every time you go to a particular field. Therefore the way to do that would be to set posts up at each field and then you don't have to bother with the tripod. Just walk over to the post, screw the base station onto the post and when you're done with the field do the reverse.

The EZ-Guide 500 will probably be easier to switch between tractors if you are wanting to use it on multiple tractors because it just has a suction cup on the window. The MojoRTK in theory is moveable and that's what we thought we would do and honestly we probably still will, but once you get it installed it's not something that you really look forward to moving.

That's all I can think of right now I guess. 

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