I'm going to take the liberty of re-using your photos, now imagine having to drag all this stuff into the deep woods
Actually, that is a bit misleading Ralph, the gun is a little heavier, but the legs, tribrach's, bipod, data collector are the same number of items either gun, the big difference is in the actual battery setup. I was not a fan of the three pack battery rig because you had to pull each one out and charge individually.
If you look at the little green case on the end you will see our solution, a lightweight gel cell batter in a shoulder case, we put tape measure in the case too.
Yes the newer guns are better but really unless your are working your rear end off, you need to consider the price differential.
I agree with the pricing argument but I still think you would be more efficient with a conventional lightweight setup, 2 people and radios.
Thanks for all the feedback.
From purely a cost standpoint, the regular total station seems the way to go. However, the one thing that came up in our shop was repeating angles. The Robot doesn't screw this up regardless of how many times you repeat angles. Manually, the crew chief may not know about it until someone checks his work. Given the remote location and expensive logistics, it may actually be cheaper in the long run to buy an S6. At $700 per round trip airfare, it doesn't take long to eat up the savings of cheaper hardware.
This is exactly why I print my own battery cases and have gone to LiPo. Batteries are almost not noticeable they are so light and they work very well. The pole mounted 360° battery was a bit of a bear to get right though.
The weight of those black radio batteries (10 AA batteries) in the picture will eventually break the radio clip as well, the LiPo ones are much lighter. We are running my 3D printed clips which are much stronger, but, I think we would be fine with the stock ones now. 10 times 31g (weight of NiMh AA) is 310 grams and the weight of the 2 amp LiPo is 3 times 37 g or 111 grams or a third the weight
https://surveyorconnect.com/index.php?mode=thread&id=241500#p270909
https://surveyorconnect.com/index.php?mode=thread&id=270919#p271568
While definitely not as fancy as Norm's, I also got really tired of lugging the three bricks and their holder around: WAY too much weight! I got a LiOn battery and did some re-cabling and ended up with this:
Much better! That's my original version, which would give me a solid half day in the woods, so I'd bring two since they both fit right in the gun case. My new version, which also fits in the gun case and the same Nomad cover as shown in the pic, will give me two to three days in the woods, no problem. Oh yeah, and someone way up above said something about the S6 being more accurate than the 5600: I've used both extensively, and I did not find that to be the case. I find them both to be excellent.
