Nate Reporting...

[Nate The Surveyor]

I have invested quite alot into getting Cellular Corrections.
When I bought my T-3, and LS+ Upgrade, I added to it a $1000 Verizon Card. (Around my area, Verizon is the most reliable carrier.) And, added a $ 500 charge to activate some component of it. I never used it. The 500 charge ran out.
Then, Last week, I went to DAC, and spent some $500 to get going on BOTH the LS and the T3. Since I had TRIED to get it going once before, I wound up needing assistance. Philip Lancaster helped me, til blue in the face. Then, Adam Plumley had to get in deeper, and make a bunch of changes. This got it going. So, I have just over 2K invested in this.
My last transaction with DAC pays for DAC for a year. (no monthly payment).
Well, I went out in the field, and used it for a day. It gives full spectrum corrections. It works faster than ever. I think this is really the BEST and WIDEST of corrections. In deep woods, if gives the FASTEST corrections I have ever experienced.
Another benefit, is about a 15 mile radius from the base. So long as you have CELL, you have CORRECTIONS.
Downside. I lost connection with the base 3x that day. To restart, I turned off cell corrections, and Restarted. Having to do this 3x in one day, is an indication of some sort of setting or modification needing to be done in the LS. This turning off, then on, did not take long, and got it all going again.

2.) I need to get going with AHTD (Hwy Dpmt) CORS corrections. I will soon have this going.

I like Cell corrections.

Nate

 

[Darren Clemons]

Nate,
Be very cautious of those corrections farther than 5 miles from a single baseline base setup. Rtpk will be fine, but rtk corrections will start being “off” about a tenth at the 4.4/5 mile range and increase a bit the farther you go. There’s another thread from @nusouthsc about this started about a year ago. Those rtk shots will be accurate “within themselves” - for instance, two points 500’ apart will shoot 500.00’ but they will be a tad bit off of the rtpk solutions for those points. The rtpk solutions will be the more “true” state plane coordinate. This is fine if you make sure you stick with “one or the other” but if you’re doing a large, wooded boundary and sometimes (very often in our case), use BOTH depending on how quick you get the shots, in can turn into a bit of a mess! Not good having to pick and choose which one to use - both should match.

It’s a thread I HAD NOT seen unfortunately before I invested a ton in a brand new Delta 3s base and also upgraded an older T1M I had with an external port to use both for permanent base stations. We found out, only after I got them both going that, in fact, we can’t go more than 5 miles using tcp without seeing rtk errors. Not sure what, if anything is being done to solve this issue as there’s been massive changes in the “engineering and troubleshooting“ department in the last couple of years.

I went from “thinking” I could use these up to 10-12 miles to only being able to go maybe 4 miles before seeing enough rtk/rtpk differences that I won’t trust it. That’s about 20% of the coverage area I’d hoped for. I certainly wouldn’t have invested what I did if I’d known.
My guess is, when the rtk engine was 1st designed, it wasn’t designed for these types of distances as all anyone used back then was UHF and you’d get maybe 2-3 miles max distance from your base. Hopefully this is something that can be addressed in the very near future as it seems like there’d be no reason it couldn’t be.

Now, all that being said, the State RTN CORS stations you’re talking about are a different animal. They run on a different setup, not single baseline, and each time you “dial in”, that’ll create a “virtual base”. Depending on how far you are from one of those stations you’ll get very close to a “true” state plane coordinate and those rtk/rtpk coordinates will match. The difference is (at least with mine here in Ky.) is, we don’t have Bediou and working/getting fixes in coverage isn’t very dependable at all like it is from a single baseline setup. Rtpk will work off the VRS network but it MUCH slower and less reliable than from a single baseline type setup.

I’m certainly not an expert on this situation, I’m just sharing some of the experiences we've discovered since trying to go to several “permanent“ base stations and make use of tcp at long range. I’d welcome any thoughts and feedback from others that can add to or correct anything I’ve shared that may be different.

 

[hntwhitetail]

I have invested quite alot into getting Cellular Corrections.
When I bought my T-3, and LS+ Upgrade, I added to it a $1000 Verizon Card. (Around my area, Verizon is the most reliable carrier.) And, added a $ 500 charge to activate some component of it. I never used it. The 500 charge ran out.
Then, Last week, I went to DAC, and spent some $500 to get going on BOTH the LS and the T3. Since I had TRIED to get it going once before, I wound up needing assistance. Philip Lancaster helped me, til blue in the face. Then, Adam Plumley had to get in deeper, and make a bunch of changes. This got it going. So, I have just over 2K invested in this.
My last transaction with DAC pays for DAC for a year. (no monthly payment).
Well, I went out in the field, and used it for a day. It gives full spectrum corrections. It works faster than ever. I think this is really the BEST and WIDEST of corrections. In deep woods, if gives the FASTEST corrections I have ever experienced.
Another benefit, is about a 15 mile radius from the base. So long as you have CELL, you have CORRECTIONS.
Downside. I lost connection with the base 3x that day. To restart, I turned off cell corrections, and Restarted. Having to do this 3x in one day, is an indication of some sort of setting or modification needing to be done in the LS. This turning off, then on, did not take long, and got it all going again.

2.) I need to get going with AHTD (Hwy Dpmt) CORS corrections. I will soon have this going.

I like Cell corrections.

Nate

Still liking everything? Get all the bugs figured out?

 

[Nate The Surveyor]

It works well. UNLESS cell coverage is down. I have had to go back to UHF on several jobs recently, as:
The cell system was down on one job.
The cell system was too spotty.
I am in the FRINGE areas, where UHF is all that is available, often.
Another "Bug" that seems to be in it is that I have had to TURN the internal cell modem, OFF then back on again, as I pass from "OUT of Cell areas" to "In Cell coverage areas".
It seems that it shuts down, after some time of No coverage, and has to Re-start, via turning it off, then back on. But, there is more to it than that. It's intermittent.
WHERE ARE THE PROGRAMMERS?
N

 

[hntwhitetail]

It works well. UNLESS cell coverage is down. I have had to go back to UHF on several jobs recently, as:
The cell system was down on one job.
The cell system was too spotty.
I am in the FRINGE areas, where UHF is all that is available, often.
Another "Bug" that seems to be in it is that I have had to TURN the internal cell modem, OFF then back on again, as I pass from "OUT of Cell areas" to "In Cell coverage areas".
It seems that it shuts down, after some time of No coverage, and has to Re-start, via turning it off, then back on. But, there is more to it than that. It's intermittent.
WHERE ARE THE PROGRAMMERS?
N

I think this is what happened the other day. Was doing a survey and a sidewalk surveyor was flagging me down and I had my hotapot with me and went too far away from my ls+ and had to go back to the base to reconnect. On this project the base was close enough to save time, but on larger projects and where I can only get the base in a safe spot, could be a headache.