Ok, I have had the triumph 3 for a week now and have used it in a variety of
environments. I lost the first day due to radio issues, and have not had any
luck with using my 35 watt as a repeater. More on that shortly.
The first day was in mixed pines and hardwoods following a traverse I had
done the week before with my T-2 as a base. There was no noticeable improvement
in locations. All the spots that had verified before, verified again, and
the static points had to be staticed again. All the points were less that a
tenth of where the initial traverse showed them. The second day was working
on a site we had control on from 20 years ago and that I had worked on last
summer. This site was more Eastern Red Cedar, arboe vitae and mixed hardwoods.
There was a significant increase in verified fixes here, but given the time that
had elapsed from last summer, I am not sure if it is contributable to the additional
constellations or some other factor. The vectors from the old corners to the
new locations were again less than a tenth. The third day in the field saw
mostly cut over with in a river bottom following another old job. Most of the
locations verified, except for a couple. There was no noticeable difference
in predicting which verified and which didn't, so I took pictures if anyone
wants to review them. Again the closure to the old work as less than a tenth.
So location accuracy is not a problem.
General observations regarding the Triumph 3.
1. The housing and mounting screw are more robust than the T-2 and should be
a marked improvement giving long service.
2. The requirement of attaching the antenna for both blue tooth and the
radio may prove to be a weak point over time. Also, some one needs to look
into why the 35 watt won't work as a repeater with the Triumph 3. I took
many pictures & screen shots and have done the set up outlined by Matt on the
website for whenever someone has a little time. I would also suggest that
given the blue tooth range with the antenna, that maybe the repeater be
able to blue tooth and possibly increase the battery life on the Triumph 3.
Also, my "duh" moment: Modemvu is not the same as Netview modem for configuring
the radio to be the repeater.
3. It also appears that the unit needs to run for a couple of hours in your
location to start work properly. The first day, it was charged all night, but
didn't show but about 6 hours battery capacity, said the base point was 20'+
off in regard to the proven base point (DPOS before). After that first day
the battery life is more on a full time of 11 to 12 hours, and now the base
locations are within a few feet similar to the T-2 in the base rover setup.
My overall impression of the Triumph 3 is good. There are a couple of things
to be aware of: 1. For those who remember way back when the T-2 started to log
base data, it would do something weird on the odd occasion. The Triumph 3 has
done this same thing a couple of times as well. It will run through the resets
and start "popping corn" only to start giving 20' to 30' distances in the scatters
about half way through the occupation. It will continue and finally verify, but
you may be on the point for 10 minutes or more. This is probably some kind of
programming fix or an update to the LS may fix this.
These issues may be attributable to the LS as it seems to be under powered for
the new information, as has been discussed on the forum. A couple of times,
the screen would stop updating the scatters and epochs at around 150 to 170
seconds while the clock and engines kept advancing. After a while the engines
would reset and then everything would update on the screen and the shot be
verified. Also, you have to turn down the GNSS engines from 6 to 2 for the
current setup. I am curious if the new chip for the LS would allow you to go
back to using the 6 engine setup.
Finally, THANK YOU to Shawn and Adam for all the help. It has been invaluable.
