curious what others use before heading off with the GPS?
I used to use Trimble but that went west and haven't really found a suitable replacement.
I have one for Android but not convinced of its accuracy.
Suggestions welcome thanks.
Ah! I had used this (Navcom) in past but lost it. Just found it again.
Whilst that is good, I prefer one you can set time limits as opposed to full 24 hours.
Richard,
I was used to the Trimble planning utility that came with TGO.
And there is te Trimble online version.
http://www.trimble.com/GNSSPlanningOnline/#/Dops
Since we switched to RTK with GPS + Glonass we rarely have to use the planning software.
Chr.
I've used this one from Spectra Precision (same as Trimble)
http://www.spectraprecision.com/support/tools/gnss-planning/
You can enter a starting time and then select a time span of 6, 12 or 24 hours. I still use look at mission planning when working in wooded areas.
When I need to plan a mission, which is rare these days, I use Trimble's online software.
What Chris said.
I used them 15-20 years ago, but we found that we understood the down times better just by being in the field and watching our sky plots each day. So after a while no one even looked at the software because we were so aware of the orbits.
These days, there seems to be no reason to use it, maybe if I'm in the bottom of a deep canyon, but even then it's hard to predict conditions at any given point well enough to figure out the best time to take shots.
I don't do much planning anymore, unless the site has limited sky-view, but even at that with the Glonass SVs I've had little reason to worry about insufficient data for quite a while.
I agree with others who don't find that mission planning to be as important as it once was. However there are just enough L5 satellites in the constellation to be useful when they are stacked overhead. It might be helpful, particularly for difficult points to know when these satellites are available.
The last time I used the Trimble online mission planning was for this very purpose. It's not user-friendly for this goal, though.
I had to go through (poor me) and research on wikipedia which SVs have L5 and turn on those only, and I'm still not sure I did it right (no good source to verify).
Not complaining about having to do the leg work, but for all the good mission planning is anymore, it would make a world of sense to tailor the application to have abilities aimed toward planning observations of modernized signals. Just sayin'.
Curious which one you are using for android? Does it show predicted SV availability or just the current?
SatPred - its Swedish I think.
Thanks for links.
The Trimble site seems to fit my needs.
Little wonder I had trouble. SatPred predicted mostly 3 sats more than Trimble which agreed with SurvCE on site.
Will give SatPred the flick after looking at comparisons.
I don't do much GPS (RTK) work and no Glonass but normally don't have any issues on odd times I use it.
Had a job with a few trees that caused problems yesterday and it was obvious Glonass would have walked through my area with aplomb.
