Trimble R10

I demo'd one for a week and didn't care for it. Not any faster than my r6 and quite the upgrade cost.

It also has this REALLY annoying feature where it says it is "fixed" with a precision that is really high. I think I saw a fixed solution with a precision of half a foot a few times.. which didn't make much sense to me.

That's a new feature, no more float/fixed, all fixed with watching precision up to you.

Pay close attention.

Notice that it should be blinking red, not black, when it is "out of tolerance".

:-/

so its kinda fixed...but not really FIXED??...thats a little scary.

Overkill.

???

I think there was float.. when you first pull it out it takes a minute to get initialized, that's in float mode. Then it gets initialized and you're fixed with really poor precisions that eventually come down to reasonable values.

At least the older GNSS stuff if your were initialized you can be fairly certain you're getting a good fix.. this R10 that is not the case. I don't see how this is considered a feature... for me it's a reason not to buy.

If you are asking what I mean by "Overkill" here goes:

1. Most places in the US don't look like a rainforest. Most jobs in the US don't include a Surveyor walking on a rope bridge 75 feet up in the air between two mountains. It's all advertising. A GPS that can "withstand" a drop of 75 feet is great, for some applications...not many of the applications actually exists.

2. Holding "data" through xFill sounds like a great idea if you can use that data for 10-30 minutes to finish a job up. It's only designed for few points, if that though.

3. Right now what kind of service does your GPS entail? My guess...not much, if any. When you add an electronic bubble you add the need for service, through a service center to keep it centered. With most GPS's you can check the pole in the office.

4. 440 channels....for what? There isn't use now, or through at least 2025 that would require/use this many channels.

I am not saying that I don't like the system. I absolutely love it. It's cool, it's hot, but it is still overkill, especially for the price. I think that there are some good applications for it, just not everyday, not around here.

Is it better under canopy?
More accurate under canopy?

Is it better than the R8 for protection against multipath and bad fixes?

Will it work with TSC3?

To answer these questions, let's compare the R10, to the R8 (4th generation), another Trimble receiver based on both my experience with them, as well as common threads on multiple messageboards pertaining to this issue.. I know how people get when we compare one brand to another.

No.

No.

No.

Yes.

We have eight R10 units we are using in Australia and the teams think they are great. Very fast initialization and absolutely fantastic in thick scrub (cypress forest) using GNSS and BeiDou sats. We did notice the precisions blow out but found that if they are not back in after 30 seconds, simple reset the satellites (reinitialize). We use in conjunction with TSC3 units and the TDL repeaters. We had to change to TM450s at 8000bps on the radio to handle the longer correction message with the extra sats. We are getting 26 on a good day here. We have had some problems with the radio antenna connector on the rovers coming adrift and needing to be sent back to the US for repair. We have tried the RTX in open desert areas and it works well. It is fairly hopeless once you get into the timber though, as was OmniStar.

Our R10s are nice, better than the R8, faster fixes, similar under canopy a bit better than the R8, yes do use with tsc3.

Some other feature, tilt feature, the lost radio feature, have not tested much at all yet, been working them hard, so far rugged and light. Thumbs up. All crews want them instead of the R8s which should tell you something.