California Surveyors Forums

My office wants to purchase 2 to 3 GNSS receivers for RTK surveys. The Trimble R10 is a strong contender, but it costs twice as much as Spectra Precision’s SP80 and the Geomax Zenith 35 Pro, two other products we are looking at.

We can afford 2 Trimble R10’s but I wonder if we would be better off buying 3 or 4 cheaper receivers, i.e., one of the brands above or something else. Any thoughts to share?

John,
Number one consideration would have to be what you plan to use the receivers for. You mentioned RTK, but what type of projects will you be using them on? Data collection, stakeout, occasional static sessions? It also depends on what software you're planning to use. Will you be using existing data collectors and desktop software, or will you also be buying data collectors, and thus the software that goes along with the data collector? If that is the case you'll have to factor in the usefulness of the data collector software with regards to the type of project you'll be using them on. Trimble software and hardware is in my opinion excellent, but as you said it's expensive. As for customer support, I've seen this from both sides, large and small customer, and I'm sorry to say that while Trimble was there for us on every single tiny issue when I worked for the State and we bought instruments by the hundreds, when it came to being a customer who purchased five guns...I'll just say that the results have not quite been the same. Work out any training and support agreements before purchasing and let them know what your expectations are.
Call me, if you'd like to discuss...
John K

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that it also makes a difference whether you will be operating a base-rover configuration or dialing into a real-time network. Some of the cheaper receivers have really crappy built-in modems.

Thanks, John. The work would be mostly topo. It would be nice to have as many options as possible: RTK base-rover, static, real-time network and OPUS. Good point about the modems - that would be an ugly surprise.

I purchased 2 used Carlson BRx5 receivers from U.S. Survey Supply a little over a year ago, and I could not be happier! I'm using a Carlson Data Collector with Carlson SurvCE software. I primarily use the units as a base and rover for RTK, but I do use them for recording static sessions also. The Carlson software makes it really easy to switch back and forth between RTK and Static "on the go". The support you get from Carlson is by far the best I have ever seen. I don't have any experience with the new BRx6, but I'm sure they are just as good, if not better than, the BRx5.

I would highly recommend Carlson GNSS receivers, and U.S. Survey Supply: http://www.ussurveysupply.com

If you have any questions give me a call, or PM me.

Robert Martin, PLS