In a bold move to save time and money, a group of young, proactive farmers from the Flinders Ranges bought a Real-Time Kinematic base station to share within the local cropping community.
It was over a few beers at the Booleroo pub last August that some members of the group realised they wanted more from their GPS signal providers because more farmers in the area were adopting guidance and automatic steering to their cropping program.
A meeting was then held by Todd Orrock, Murraytown, and 20 farmers from around the area attended along with local Topcon agent Darren McCallum and Topcon territory manager Tim Davis.
"The farmers from this area had been involved with KEE Technologies (bought out by Topcon) at Clare for many years and used a lot of their products because it was local," Todd said.
"A lot of us were pleased with Topcon's back up service after the buy-out, so we decided to put the idea to them first."
The idea of an RTK community base station - possibly a 'first' in Australia - was put forward as a way of achieving the most accurate correction signal, and when shared by a number of farmers would be the most cost-effective means of providing a reliable position at minimum cost.
An RTK base station can deliver 2-centimetre accuracy, compared with 10cm accuracy from a satellite-subscribed signal.
"Establishing a base station means we won't have to pay for ongoing subscription charges," Todd said.
By meeting's end, 16 neighbouring farmers from Murraytown to Wilmington and across to Pekina were convinced - and the Mount Robert RTK Base Station Group was formed.
Mount Robert was chosen for the site of the base station as it sits 683 metres above sea level. The surrounding farms are about 350-450m above sea level.
Powered by a solar array and back-up battery, the base station sources information from Russia's Glonass satellites and America's Navstar satellites - up to 17 at a time - to give the farmers greater and more consistent reliability than subscription services.
"With the height of the hill and the radio tower, we are able to get a signal 50km away and with great accuracy," Todd said.
The system works by having two Differential GPS units operating together - one being the 'base' station and the other being the 'rover' unit on the machinery.
The base station has the co-ordinates 'locked' at a fixed point (Mount Robert) and receives the normal satellite signal, measures the difference, and sends the corrections to the rover via an external radio.
Both of the DGPS units have radios and antennas for the transmission of corrections.
The system gives the most accurate repeatable signal due to the base station and the rover being so close to one another, which reduces the atmospheric changes that can distort satellite signals.
The rover equipment is not part of the group's sign-up fee, so members must already have the equipment to receive the signal, including the RTK rover and a monitor to read the signal inside the cab.
Todd said the technology was more accurate compared to their previous provider, particularly at night, and they experienced minimal drop-outs.
"If it does log off, it takes less time to log back on as this RTK is almost instantaneous - about 75 seconds," he said.
"It's a change from the 45 minute wait we used to experience for the previous accuracy to return.
"Now we all run on the one frequency - we just turn the machine on and away we go."
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