I have been using and testing the rtpk feature since getting my LS plus back about 5 weeks ago and will 2nd Matthew‘s comment that it is an amazing feature.
On every session, once you hit stop (or it completes phase 3), the LS plus immediately gets and downloads the corresponding data from the base and then processes the PPK data and gives you that solution. It is, of course, very time dependent with the longer the session the longer the downloading and subsequent processing time to come up with said solution.
I have been amazed at the quality of the solutions, even in moderate to heavy coverage with as little as 200 to 500 seconds of data.
In the screenshot above, this point was in what I would call a standard moderate wooded area. The 6 epochs in 213 seconds is shown by the brownish green square. Upon stopping the session, the rtpk processed (In about 4 minutes) and is shown horizontally by the red asterisk and vertically by the solid red line. As you can see, by the scale of my horizontal, the rtpk is no more than 0.03’ different than the rtk. Once you store this point it has BOTH coordinates, just like it has in the past AFTER you Dpos back in the office, but now you have that right on the spot - in real-time!
On much tougher points where you may not get any rtk, you can just stop each session after no more than 300/400 seconds (as of now any longer than that it takes a bit too long to process as the data gets to be too much and, as I’ve said, the results in that time frame are seeming to be remarkably accurate). As soon as the first 4 to 5 minute session is stored, go into points and manually change the coordinates to the PPK solution. Then while on the 2nd session, I put that PPK point number in the Pdelta screen (dist to last will be showing you the incorrect rtk that was stored for that point so you must use pdelta to get the “switched” coordinate. With what I’ve seen so far, with 4 or less 5 minute session, I don’t know of any point anywhere you won’t have either rtk matching one or more of those rtpk solutions or two or more of the rtpk solutions matching themselves.
There‘s quite a bit that still needs tweaked, but this option is truly changing what the LS can do. With the four super engines, there’s way, way less “bad buckets” as most times it starts on the right coordinates right off the bat and never goes to another bucket. With the addition of rtpk, what you really get is TWO shots in one.
The screenshot above is a validated 3 phase shot (in the woods) which has the blue green square calculated in the center of the 0.089’ horizontal spread of the 130 epochs. After completing, the rtpk automatically downloaded, calculated and shows the rtpk solution (probably took about 2 minutes or less on this 147 seconds of data) within about 0.03’ horizontal and the vertical almost exactly where the rtk has it (we’re never concerned about vertical accuracy on boundary in the woods of course but this is quite amazing to be honest).
On those really tough points where you likely won’t even make it to phase two your screen will look like this:
The “lead group”, of course, is shown on the horizontal side by the square. I stopped this point intentionally as one of the “testing” times of the rtpk. This was in a very tough spot and with only 214 seconds of data, the rtpk came back “appearing” to match my held rtk, indicated by the red asterisk showing up right on top of the square.
Now, another awesome feature of this rtpk is, IF this rtpk had came back and NOT matched all I do is hit “resume” and continue the session a little longer and try again. I did not continue here and the rtk and the rtpk matched within 0.04’!
The challenge up to now is, by far, getting a feel for how long to go before stopping each session and letting the rtpk calculate. That, along with, for us anyway, completely abandoning requiring a minimum of 2 engines in phases 2 & 3 the way we always have with the standard LS. With the 4 super engines, getting 2/4 is much more difficult than the standard LS getting 2/6. The trade off is however that the 1 engine fixes with the Plus are much, much more reliable. There are quite a bit more jump/fail instances, especially trying to validate in phase 3, but again, the fixes come in so much quicker you’ll get right back to phase 2 much quicker than before.
Of note, all of this is still using the pre release version of firmware in the LS plus. There are several things that have been found and are being addressed, I’ve been told, before anything gets to release version. We’ve had major, major issues with anything to do with UHF ever since day 1 with the Plus. These are tremendously massive improvements but they are still somewhat in their infant stage. All issues will certainly get fixed and improved upon as more and more LS plus units get put into circulation.