Friars Point, Mississippi | Sorry to be a late entrant here, but I just noticed the discussion and wanted to comment. You might add me to the cell phone bandwagon; though my bias is based on my experience on farm thus far. I agree with DG from AL.
We have been running an Intime-developed cell phone RTK system on our farm for two years, although our situation has a little different twist. I ran the first year off a single base CORS station in a town 12 miles away with sub 2" accuracy and very reliable system integrity; HOWEVER, the CORS in our state (we are 50 out of 50 in too many areas) still left much to be desired. We ran into people/funding problems rather than technical ones. The CORS is maintained by a state university whose primary interest is something other than providing 24/7 real-time RTK service for Delta farmers on the other end of the state. I am hoping that over time the political winds will blow in the right direction, at which time our state's CORS network will catch up to some of the others. Since I have reliable cell coverage (Cellular South), from what I see, using VRS and CORS will be a good fit for us once the network is good and ready. From what I understand with VRS, losing a single base station should not shut us down in the field.
For this year I am running my own Topcon base station (which I already owned for topo surveying/landforming), which interfaces with an Intime base server on the farm's office computer. I have two tractor Trimble units as clients which get the correction info via the internet over Audiovox cell phones. Intime put the system together for me after we figured out I already had the components we needed. Otherwise I would have had to spend 15k or so for a base. Rather than using a tower, I have the base set up outside my office window over a survey control point. Also, we have DSL available, which made it doable. The system is always running at 1.0 sec or better, and I believe the accuracy is better than last year. Even so, I would rather use a government base station than have to operate my own, assuming it's free and always on.
I did run a radio system for several months, and I personally am happier with the cell phone system for a couple of reasons. First, I seem to lose signal less often around trees with the phones. Second is range -with phones there is never any question on my Trimble what base station location I am referencing or what A-B line is the right one. That being said, if I had 5 or 6 rover units or more, and my farm was all within range of one tower, it would probably make more sense to go radio, especially if trees are not a problem. |
Questions about Coors & cell phone differential service
