Loading…
2
Warning: our GPS rovers kept dropping fix on a 40 acre site in Fresno and I need a better base setup
We ran into a problem on a 40 acre site out near Fresno last month. We use two GPS rovers on dozers and the older one kept losing its fix every time the operator got near that big metal storage building. It was dropping from our base station which is one of those radio ones and the guys got so frustrated they went back to staking with hubs. What is weird is a 900 MHz radio base next to another crew's gear worked fine a hundred feet away from our setup. Last Thursday I got a quote for a 4G cellular NTRIP setup for around $1,800 and I just don't know if the cell coverage out there holds up. My foreman keeps saying we should have gone network RTK from the start. Has anyone switched from radio to NTRIP in the central valley and did you lose accuracy or coverage when the tower signal got weak?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
jasonc501mo ago
Is losing fix near one building really worth ripping out a whole working setup over? That metal shed is just multipath, any base or rover near it is gonna bounce signals off that thing, so blaming the radio part does not add up. The fact that the other crew's 900 MHz base worked a hundred feet away tells you your radio is probably fine and something else got moved or set wrong. Going NTRIP for $1,800 just trades one problem for another, because now you are betting on cell bars out in the middle of a field, and when that tower gets weak you lose fix across the whole site, not just by the shed. Honestly staking hubs is a pain but it never drops a fix when the sky goes gray or a tower hiccups. Fix the multipath first, move your base, check your antenna, and see if the problem even follows before you spend money on a new system.
2