Having been surveying since the mid 90's we've seen lots of changes and improvements in the equipment and the technology used to enable surveyors and engineers to capture data for the end user or client. When it comes to GPS these improvements over the years have been massive.
Back in the 90's when using GPS was very new, lots of land surveyors would conduct their surveys using a base station and a rover. The rover being a backpack with all the internals of the receiver wired to the antenna on the pole. The number of satellites in orbit was low compared to today, you would be very lucky if you was tracking 8, it was more likely to be 6 or less. If the signal was lost, then initialisation could only be re-gained at a known point or by initialising back at the base station. Often this meant a lot of time being wasted and having a long walk back. At the time though this was cutting edge stuff, and we would often get asked lots of question by intrigued members of the public.
We have then seen the introduction of duel frequency RTK base and rover kits like the
Trimble 5700 that would initialise on the fly saving time walking back to known points.
Then the GNSS systems were coming on board like the Trimble R8, a multi frequency all on the pole receiver. They could track higher number of satellites and connect to correction services like Trimbles VRSNow network. This service gives the user the ability to have on demand centimetre level accuarcy virtually anywhere in the country.
And today we have the Trimble R10 and the latest R12. They give us more reliability, more accuary and more productivity. As in the video above, the new R12 can now be more productive in challenging environments including amongst tree and vegetation coverage. Even when surrounded by silver birch trees, and leaning on one, (yes it's winter here in the UK, hence no leaves on the trees), it's still tracking 16 satellites and has an accuracy more than acceptable for most surveys.
As GPS/GNSS is one of our main tools for generating our surveys, we thought this is only natural to invest in the latest technology so that we can bring this to you, our client.