I'm hoping to use my old Topcon Hiper Ga as a base station for my Trimble R10, if they will talk to each other, but I can't even get the radio channel set in Survey Pro. I've tried changing the channel on the Hiper base, but it tells me I need to set the radio mode to off. I don't really know how to do that other than pressing the button in survey pro that says "set to OFF mode", but that doesn't seem to work, as I get an error message in survey pro. I am able to connect to the Hiper via bluetooth and change other settings, but the radio channel by default is set to "---" which I assume is "none" and I'm assuming this is why I can't see the Hiper base with my R10. I've been at this for hours now, trying everything I can think, but no luck so far.
I think I made a little progress. I'm able to select "Internal D-UHF" and it allows me to select a channel without throwing up any errors. However the channel numbers seem to be different for the given frequency. channel 8 on this antenna is 464.70000 while channel 11 on my R10 antenna is 464.70000...not sure if that matters, but the R10 still won't talk to the Hiper.
The channel numbers do not matter. You can have channel 3 selected on one device and channel 6 on the other device and it will still work as long as the frequencies are the same. The channel numbers are arbitrarily assigned to the frequencies. Pick the same frequencies and you are good.
If you get this to communicate please do some checking between known points like base is on a known and rover. At one time topcon had a issue in some state plane areas and if I remember correctly it had a setting of was 84 and was 84 no trans in certain states or it came be way off when using topcon with Trimble or other manufacturers receivers. Now that’s been a long time ago like 2006-2009 ish time frame. While it would repeat fine it was off shifted from the truth quite a bit. Now I could have this wrong but I think I had remembered seeing this in TN and GA and had researched same issues in a few other states back then. FYI.
I spent all day trying every combination of settings I could think of and never could get the R10 to see the Hiper base. I'm just going to buy a R8-4 and use that as my base.
I’m just going to buy a R8-4 and use that as my base.
Honestly, that's going to be the best option in the end anyways...running an old 1- or 2-constellation base with a newer 4-constellation rover is like tying one hand behind your back...