RTK-Autosteer

Lightning strikes – RTK base stations November 10, 2010

The obvious place to postion a base station is often the highest point on a farm and if this is remote from farm buildings or any other features of greater height, makes it very vulnerable to lightning strikes. Has anyone any advice about how to reduce this risk? Is it possible for example to create a conductor at the same location without interferring with the radio signal from the base station because this conductor must obviously extend higher than the base station?

Regarding the danger of damage due to lightning, this is one of the very good reasons to have your base station geo-referenced, particularly if you are on controlled traffic or are using it for inter-row operations or bed making, when you want to be able to come back to exactly the same place every time. Ask your supplier how to get your base station geo-referenced. This will allow you to ensure that the replacement station, positioned in exactly the same place, locates itself on exactly the same coordinates as the base it replaces and avoids any “jump” in absolute positioning when you start tracking with your new base station.

Another practical aspect of base station location is power supply. If you are relying on a battery, you will almost certainly have to mount this out of reach of passers by, which of course means that there is some hassle for you to reach it as well. Some base stations can take around 1.5 amps, meaning that a 120 ampere-hour battery will only last 67 hours at the most – less than 3 days!

Have you any practical tips you would like to share with others? Just post a comment if you do.