Topcon PS

I got one... its the Jam!
What would you like to know?

How can such a large corporation give the name PS to one of its equipment line? Don't they have any surveyor on staff to review their names before going tho the press? Makes you wonder if they are in tune with their industry, its jargon anyway. Why not just call it NFG? After the Hilti POS 15/18, now the Topcon PS.

Anyway, to answer your question, I haven't seen it but I do like Topcon total stations.

I'm considering purchasing either a QS or a PS. The PS is more money and was wondering if it tracks better than the QS and is it worth the price differnce?

The short answer is YES! The PS will soon replace the QS all together. I was considering the QS and the PS came out the day before I was going to purchase the QS... bought a PS sight un-seen(the dealer didn't have one and/or had never even seen one). The gun has exceeded all the expectations I had. I like the never ending knobs, there are not servo/electronic driven while using the gun two man style... it will replace your two man gun as well, its the only one we put in the truck now (cept when we are shooting creek or rough wooded topo).

There was really no learning curve as I took it out the day after I got it and did three small jobs... AND we didn't have to upgrade our DataCollection software as it runs on good old TDS4.7 and SurvCE "masked" as a Sokkia-SRX as it has the same radio and drivers from the SRX.

Topcon PoS

There's a reason they named it that.

So Topcon finally wised up and just copied the Leica 1100 series?

I thought more of you Charles... Don't belittle yourself by trash talking your (Leica) competion, it makes you look cheap and unprofessional.

Haha. Name calling now? I've said it before, I'll say it again...it ain't a Leica thing...I'd take a South over a Topcon any day. What's the point of buying a robot if you have to have two ppl out there because they dont track right?

I tell you what, you bring you Topcon PoS out and we'll put it up next to anything in my shop. Topcon makes some good products, i.e. machine control and laser...robots...absolutely now.

thats ridiculous, I use my Topcon Robot solo everyday and have zero problems with it tracking.

I aplogize Charles, but...

I aplogize Charles, but I will have to decline your "test" as I am a Professional Surveyor and I survey for a living. I don't have time to argue this non-sense or play games. My robot has been baseline tested, I also have tested the tracking. I feel confident you have not seen a Topcon-PS so your opinion will be taken with a grain of salt.

>There's a reason they named it that.
It has been many years (15) since I last used a Topcon. When I did I pretty much shared your opinion of them. A little over a year ago I attended a demo of the Topcon QS and was quite impressed. It really seemed a lot tighter than your daddy's Topcons.

My daddy's topcon

> It really seemed a lot tighter than your daddy's Topcons.

I recently broke out my father's topcon. I got it after he died in 1996.

It had some good design features for the time. It is a GTS-2B (I think) from around 1984 (mid-eighties anyway).

It has a second clip-on handle with a built-in battery (that still worked), and it has a separate battery that hangs on the tripod (that still worked).

It had an internal edm that you didn't have to clip on the sight of the gun (did Leica ever figure that out?). They called it a "total station" at the time, but you still read the angles with a vernier, but had a digital readout of the slope distance. It had a add-on addition (that this one doesn't have) that would reduce your distance to horizontal if you typed in the zenith angle.....lol.

I wiggled in on my front subdivision line between two exterior pins I found and managed to do it with a minimum number of moves (I still remembered how to do it). I fine-leveled, and duouble-centered and it was right on with no split between direct and reverse. Measured distances checked within 2-hundredths from plat distances from 1970 original property pins.

They had (maybe still do?) a rough-measure setting that read out to the nearest-even hundredth, and it had a fine-measure that takes a little longer to get a return and reads to the ½-hundtreth of a foot.

The tribachs are extremely handy. We used to traverse with Wild T-2's in the eighties, and we would leap-frog the instrument by setting up tripods at the back- and fore-sights, and clip-in and clip-out of the topcon tribrachs. The great thing about those were that it had the optical plummet in the body of the tribrach, and a see-through plummet, so that you could use the instrument's optical plummet and see through to the point.

No, it wasn't a Wild-Heerbrug (aka Leica now), but it still works pretty darn good.

I am thinking of purchasing a Topcon PS and wondering if you are still happy with the purchase of yours.
We have a Topcon 9003 and are generally happy with it.
Any thoughts about the PS would be appreciated.

Thanks!