Pro tip: double check your drone's RTK network settings before a big site survey

I spent 4 hours last week trying to figure out why my mapping drone was giving me 2-inch vertical errors on a new job site in Tacoma. Turns out the base station had auto-connected to a public network with a known offset that wasn't in the manual. Has anyone else run into weird RTK correction source problems like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

gavinw531mo ago

Yeah, I saw a forum post about that exact public network issue. People were saying it can throw off your elevation by a few inches if you don't catch it.

the_kevin1mo ago

Honestly that part about it throwing off your elevation by a few inches is so real. I read a whole thing last week where a guy was mapping a trail and his track was showing him walking like three feet above the actual ground. It was all because his phone grabbed a weak public wifi signal and mixed it with GPS. Tbh it makes you not trust any of the data unless you're on a known good connection. Ngl I just turn my wifi off completely when I'm out trying to get accurate numbers now.

gibson.robert1mo ago

My Trimble unit did that once near Seattle. I had to manually pick the nearest CORS station from the state's list instead of letting it auto-connect. Fixed the whole thing.