farmer.z - 12/26/2017 22:01

Thank you for all the feedback, very helpful. To help answer some of your questions:

I'm only looking at using RTK on the planter tractor at the moment. It's the one I usually run <- my selfish reason for assisted steering ; ) We use a different tractor for spraying and side dressing which just uses beacon/WAAS at the moment for a lightbar. However, once we get comfortable with the RTK, I'm sure the operator usually in the other tractor will be hitting me up for steering and RTK also. We probably don't need RTK at the same time on both tractors, so swamping receivers is definitely an option.

I would prefer to use US Cellular simply cause coverage seems good and then I can just add a $10 data line to the current farm plan. But I'll use someone else if needed.

Reason I'm looking to avoid using a temporary base and prefer cellular is that I farm outside my regular career. So come spring most of the work probably gets done from about 8pm to 8am and the last thing I want to worry about is setting up a base station at 3am when I'm jumping around fields. Most of our fields are only 10-20 acres and I can move up to 10 miles in a night depending on which fields are ready to plant. It's nice to just lift the planter out of the ground and run to the next field. I'm hoping some assisted steering will make the night go a little easier and get rid of the invisible fence post that I seem to drive around.

GTD, on your reference to receiver technology, how would an older 252/332 handle the distance vs a newer 262/432. Does the further distances require more processing power that is only offered by new units? I'm not scared of old technology as I actually quite enjoy tinkering with it and look forward to the occasional eBay steal. However, I do want to make sure that it has the physical capabilities that I need.