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External radios and RTK in canopy
Currently running BRX7 B/R. No experience with external radios. I understand the purpose is to extend range from base, but curious if they improve fixes or speed of fixes in canopy. Also curious if they improve connection in hilly terrain.
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10 Replies
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If you just mean UHF Radios to extend your broadcast/receive range, then no. They will not do anything but extend your rage. They will improve range in hilly terrain. The higher you get your base antenna, the better. I have gotten as much as 9 miles out of a 1 watt built in UHF radio from a GR-3. The base was probably 30′ up on an old stockpile that was on the tallest hill for dozens of miles. No trees, no hills between us. Basically direct line of sight.
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Are you currently running corrections over cell?
If you’re working in areas with only so-so cell coverage, UHF will often get you better latency than cell, which can improve time-to-fix, but not likely enough to make it a game-changer.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
The BRX7 is a good receiver. I have followed behind one in canopy and letting it settle in and being patient and redundant measurements we were all within a very reasonable position of each other. Javad is another one. The radio is exactly what Rover83 said. Latency cure. Even when i am in a good cell coverage area and know i will be on site all day. I will vrs a position and move to radio just because its reliable and no latency which cuts down on outliers most of the time. Come back next day set on different point and work away. You can build a nice little network in no time that way.
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@rover83 I guess the only time we’re running corrections over cell would be RTN to establish base coordinate. Everything after that is base/rover. Thanks for the info.
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@johnh2005 I think this is our issue, rover drops down a hill and range is lost. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if we’ve lost radio or just not enough satellites to fix in canopy. Thanks.
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If you are losing signal when you drop down over hills or what not, you may want to consider a repeater rather than a full on radio. https://benchmarksupply.com/products/re-s1-radio-extension-system is what we used to use. It worked great as well. There is probably something similar for your equipment.
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@rover83 I guess the only time we’re running corrections over cell would be RTN to establish base coordinate. Everything after that is base/rover. Thanks for the info.
Ah, I was confused, it sounded like you were running cellular corrections and looking to switch.
If you’re using the internal radios of the base/rover, you’re already running UHF. External radio only changes the source of the communications and gives you additional range.
I prefer to run the external radio as a repeater by default, so I can set it up to bounce the signal over hills or around fingers/ridgelines.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
@johnh2005 I think this is our issue, rover drops down a hill and range is lost. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if we’ve lost radio or just not enough satellites to fix in canopy. Thanks.
you should be able to tap somewhere and see how long since your last base radio correction was received, know your software.
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@robertusa Interesting…I was unaware of this feature. Thanks, I’ll look into this.
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