[AT] OT-now GPS

Henry Miller hank at millerfarm.com
Wed Apr 8 04:05:16 PDT 2015


The laws of physics prevent the satellite only systems from getting more accurate than about 16 feet. You know how on a hot day things sometimes get wavy off in the distance? Same thing happens to satellite signals, and the satellite is much farther away than those hazy things.

 Throw in something on the ground and you can get much closer.

Disclaimer, I work for John Deere on the 4600 displays. I'm not speaking for them though. 


On April 7, 2015 8:24:38 PM CDT, Greg Hass <ghass at m3isp.com> wrote:
>I bought a GPS unit three years ago. Bought one of the cheaper units at
>
>a little over over $700. If I were doing it again, I would probably try
>
>to afford a $ 1500 unit.  The one I have works good for spreading 
>fertilizer and I have sprayed with it once or twice but it is somewhat 
>limited. For instance; a relative bought the more expensive unit and he
>
>can hook it to a sprayer controller and it will  tell the unit ground 
>speed and is more accurate on the swath width.  As was mentioned, I to 
>have noticed accuracy is greatly affected on rough ground. The book
>says 
>to mount the antenna on the roof of the cap to get a clear view of the 
>sky; however, that far off the ground on rough ground I know the
>antenna 
>is moving 2 feet back and forth and the reading in the tractor is 
>unstable so I just pick an average and drive accordingly. When
>spreading 
>fertilizer I go 40 ft. swathes and it overlaps some anyway so a foot or
>
>two is good. Without the GPS my swathes would vary 10 or 20 feet 
>depending on which tracks I followed. The way I understand it, 
>auto-steer is a whole other beast. My cousin uses one and the way I 
>understand it, it does not operate like the GPS we are used to. His
>uses 
>antennas placed on cell phone towers over a three county area. A couple
>
>of dealers in that area got together to make the system. They say the 
>satellites are not accurate for things like planting corn as their 
>system will keep the planter within a one inch spacing. This system is 
>not cheap as my cousin says the fee for tower use is about $3000 per 
>year plus the equipment to mount on the tractors is about $15,000. We  
>do have many people in our area using this system. My cousin says that 
>he figures this system saves him well over $10,000 a year in labor, 
>fuel, and extra wear caused by overlapping too much or having skips 
>which the field cultivator missed. The downside is all these people are
> 
>working at least 1500 acres compared to my 100 so I have to stick with 
>the old ways just due to the cost.
>            Greg Hass
>
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