posted
on Wednesday, September 28, 2022
in
News/Blog
LandMark Ong Base Station RTK Customer,
We were recently informed that Aurora Coop is decommissioning the Ong Elevator. Our Ong RTK Base Station is on top of the elevator. The power will be cut to the elevator as well as access to the facility. While we could possibly find a way to get power back to the base station, there are other concerns that arise to keep that base station operational. Those concerns mainly are around the safety of our employees to gain access to the base station on top of an abandoned facility that would have reduced maintenance and safety measures in place on manlifts and other parts of the facility.
The Ong RTK Base Station was originally constructed back before we had a 450 MHz RTK and we used 900 MHz radios that were mainly “line of sight” type of signal. In those times, we needed multiple Base Stations and Repeaters to provide adequate coverage, especially in areas with tree lines and rolling terrain. In the western portion of our RTK network, we eliminated most of these base stations that were considered redundant within the last ten years. At the time, our customers were concerned with the risk of losing RTK signal and not being able to AutoTrac. Many growers were using iTC receivers, and once they were out of the 15-minute RTK extend period, they would drop to 3D WAAS and not be able to AutoTrac.
The bottom line is, we have proven that it works, they can run without issues, and we have not needed to replace those base stations. Since then, technology has come a long way to help with that as well. StarFire 3000s can fall back to SF2 for two weeks if you would lose RTK for an extended period and StarFire 6000s can run for two weeks on RTK Extend without a base station, which helps immensely.
Based on the maps below, we are going to move towards the end of life of the Ong RTK Base Station effective immediately. We will make sure you have access to the surrounding RTK Base Stations – Saronville, Geneva, Carleton and Edgar. All four of those base stations are good, strong, base stations that have amplifiers and Base Station Manager on them. The amplifiers help push the signal out further than just using a radio alone helping to push through terrain and vegetation. Base Station Manager allows us to remotely manage and support those base stations. In the past, before Base Station Manager, we may not have known a base was down until the phone started ringing. Base Station Manager has allowed us to be more proactive and monitor base stations from anywhere. While it isn’t perfect, it greatly helps us ensure our base stations are up and running when you need them to be. Our goal is to have all our base stations work perfectly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
If you have any concerns, please reach out to one of us below as we want you to be informed and comfortable with this change.
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Saronville:
- Network ID: 4082
- Frequency: 452.05
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Geneva:
- Network ID: 4023
- Frequency: 451.3
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Carleton:
- Network ID: 4026
- Frequency: 461.875
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Edgar:
- Network ID: 4086
- Frequency: 452
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The red circle below would be the affected coverage for the RTK Base Station on Ong today. The picture on the right is with the Ong Base Station removed. As you can see, the green circles are covering the same area from the surrounding base stations. The darker green is an overlap of at least two base stations. Notice that there are no areas without coverage in the right-hand picture, and most areas still have duplication.
Thank you for your business and continued support of LandMark’s RTK Network.