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| This is going to get long and I am including some background information that I consider important. I should say up front that there are more qualified people than me to answer this. I hope Art or someone else will correct me if I am wrong. The Coast Guard does not have authority to fund the inland beacons and is hired by other agencies to do this. These beacons may not survive due to politics and funding. The maritime beacons will continue for the foreseeable future. I am in range of both types, so this is not a problem for me. The standard range that I am familiar with is 60 miles. The nearest inland beacon is about 30 miles away from our typical job. The nearest maritime beacon is about 100 miles away. In our application (floaters) there is not a significant difference in the extra 70 miles. There is a difference with a powerful one that is 300 miles away. The Trimble 332 user's guide states that Beacon accuracy can be "(10 cm through 30 cm) RMS 15 min". The OnmiSTAR XP accuracy is stated as "20 cm (7.87 in) after the signal has fully Differential GPS converged".
The only Beacon corrected receivers that I would consider are theTrimble 332 and 132. None of the new Trimble Easy Guide systems can receive beacons corrections directly. Now, If you are considering any kind of auto steer, I believe a real gyro is required for your application. The only reasonable priced one is the T2 from Trimble. This means Easy (whatever) from Trimble. Now it gets harder, some, maybe all of the Easy Guides can receive RTCM (Beacon) corrections from an external receiver. You would need a sharper than average dealer to do this. The 332 and 132 receivers can send these corrections. I think that an old and cheaper 132 (even the oldest 132 that can not take the latest firmware) could do this as well as a new 332. I am running 132 and 332 Trimble receivers with Raven Lightbar/Smartrax hydraulic auto steer on Floaters and believe the Raven Enhancer ($3500 +/-) would be reqd to do an acceptable job on rows.
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omnistar xp
