We have a Leica TS15 that uses a RH17 radio handle, recently it was discovered that the antenna was missing from the handle and so a replacement was sought. It seems to be a genuine replacement however, now that the replacement antenna it is fitted, the range between the controller and total station seems to be, at best, 75-80m (250'US). All of the contacts are clean and the antenna is pushed home, have been trying all manner of ideas for two days now but all to no avail. Any sensible suggestions would be appreciated!
Years ago I had the radio go out on a Trimble 5603. The problem was that the antenna was compromised (ie/broken), which caused the radio to overheat and burn out.
My TS15 range goes between 90m to 150m depending on where I'm using it. In the city where there are a lot of magnetic fields present, from Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 5G towers etc, the range dips to quite low numbers and sometimes the connection drops for a few seconds.
I've also setup the instruments in bad spots where it became nigh unusable. One was on a construction site close to a camera on a pole, which I suspect was connected to a modem sending the livefeed to a server. Everytime I would powersearch, it would kill the connection. After I realised what the issue was, I setup twenty meters further away and it was all working fine again.
Another time I was doing a long road detail and I wanted to reduce the number of setups to save time. One side of the road was lined with massive trees with overhanging canopies. The other side had a string of power poles. The choice was easy but wrong. I was right under the power cables, which were either lower than usual or had extra voltage running through them because my machine started acting very strange. It was giving me error messages I've never seen before, 'You are connected to the wrong instrument', 'Firmware version mismatch' etc. I thought the total station was kaput and called a colleague to swap it over. I can't remember at what point it clicked, but once I setup away from the power lines it was all okay again.
To make a long story short, where are testing the range? Location can make a world of difference to the range in my experience.
Another theory I'm working on is that the type of battery you use can also impact, if you're using aftermarket ones, it will dip below what's expected, but this is just a theory at the moment since I can't test it fully, apart from some experiences with changes in the quality of connection when after swapping batteries.
