Trimble rangepoint RTX accuracy

Red Rider

Member
Location
N. Scotland
Having tried sowing on rangepoint rtx this year it eventually seemed to be matching up with markers etc and looking ok (after several fields of glitches and problems which a software update seems to have solved) anyway top dressing now and setting up ab line on 1st pre em mark and then letting it steer itself for subsequent tramlines but working across the field it can be at least a metre off the pre-em tramlines?

Is it just a case of that's how accurate/inaccurate rangepoint is or do i need to investigate other settings?
 

Matt77

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
East Sussex
Been a few years since I had either but I was told that rangepoint wasn’t repeatable and centrepoint was, same pass to pass accuracy but rangepoint would drift over time, can’t remember if that was hours, day or weeks, was told it would not drive up the same place in a years time, I was looking at CTF so went for centrepoint, now on RTK but for other reasons.
 

Steevo

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
I find similar.

It’s perfectly good enough for planting and no gaps are viable.
Some fields when I go back to do the next job (spraying, fert etc) the AB line needs shifting, others it’s bob on.

But exactly as you say, by the time you are halfway across the the field your tractor won’t be steering itself down the tramlines.

I just accept that the tramlines are accurate enough that I don’t need autosteer so just manually steer it.
 

Fraserb

Member
Location
Scottish Borders
I find similar.

It’s perfectly good enough for planting and no gaps are viable.
Some fields when I go back to do the next job (spraying, fert etc) the AB line needs shifting, others it’s bob on.

But exactly as you say, by the time you are halfway across the the field your tractor won’t be steering itself down the tramlines.

I just accept that the tramlines are accurate enough that I don’t need autosteer so just manually steer it.

I genuinely never found that, as you say sometimes needed to move the line for first pass but after that usually ok.
 

Romeogolf

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Wiltshire
What drill and what tramlines are you working with?
Presuming a 4m drill and 24m trams you have 6 passes of the drill to one with the sprayer/Fert spinner. In my experience, RTX rangepoint is not accurate enough/repeatable enough to make 6 passes measure up to one with enough precision to make your A/B lines repeatable year round on the trams your drill has put in.

I run on Centrepoint fast now and it’s very good indeed, and it will make drill and sprayer match up but I still tend to put the tramlines in with the sprayer not the drill. It makes drilling easier and trams travel better.
 

Red Rider

Member
Location
N. Scotland
What drill and what tramlines are you working with?
Presuming a 4m drill and 24m trams you have 6 passes of the drill to one with the sprayer/Fert spinner. In my experience, RTX rangepoint is not accurate enough/repeatable enough to make 6 passes measure up to one with enough precision to make your A/B lines repeatable year round on the trams your drill has put in.

I run on Centrepoint fast now and it’s very good indeed, and it will make drill and sprayer match up but I still tend to put the tramlines in with the sprayer not the drill. It makes drilling easier and trams travel better.

3m drill and 21m trams, the drill width is set for 2.95m on gps so over 7 passes that does amount to a 35cm variance compared to a straight 21m for fert/spray. As Steevo says it's no hardship to steer down the tramlines i was just curious if the variance was what other people experienced.
 

Shutesy

Moderator
Arable Farmer
3m drill and 21m trams, the drill width is set for 2.95m on gps so over 7 passes that does amount to a 35cm variance compared to a straight 21m for fert/spray. As Steevo says it's no hardship to steer down the tramlines i was just curious if the variance was what other people experienced.
If your drilling at 2.95 and got your sprayer set at 21 exactly that will probably be the main cause of your issue. If you sprayed at 20.65 I bet you would find you wont be far out across the field maybe just a 5cm nudge here and there.

Also if you set an AB line when you drill as an example it may have a heading of 100.68 (number picked from thin air), if you then set a new AB line on a pre-em mark you don't have to be far out at all when setting a new A and B to end up with a heading of say 101.25. That tiny difference in heading could be a good metre or more off the tramline set with the original A-B line at the far end of a long field.

With our JD Greenstar system we have got every field saved on every screen in each machine, each field then has a virtual boundary round the outside and its own predetermined lines with different headings for drilling, primary cultivation and secondary cultivation all setup on the PC. Therefore if Field A has a drilling line of heading 105.5, the sprayer will then come along, pick that same drilling line from the list, heading 105.5, shift the A-B line onto the pre-em mark or into the visible tramline and off you go. We drill 30m tramlines with 6m drills at 5.95 and the sprayer is set at 29.75. Works a treat.
 

Fraserb

Member
Location
Scottish Borders
If your drilling at 2.95 and got your sprayer set at 21 exactly that will probably be the main cause of your issue. If you sprayed at 20.65 I bet you would find you wont be far out across the field maybe just a 5cm nudge here and there.

Also if you set an AB line when you drill as an example it may have a heading of 100.68 (number picked from thin air), if you then set a new AB line on a pre-em mark you don't have to be far out at all when setting a new A and B to end up with a heading of say 101.25. That tiny difference in heading could be a good metre or more off the tramline set with the original A-B line at the far end of a long field.

With our JD Greenstar system we have got every field saved on every screen in each machine, each field then has a virtual boundary round the outside and its own predetermined lines with different headings for drilling, primary cultivation and secondary cultivation all setup on the PC. Therefore if Field A has a drilling line of heading 105.5, the sprayer will then come along, pick that same drilling line from the list, heading 105.5, shift the A-B line onto the pre-em mark or into the visible tramline and off you go. We drill 30m tramlines with 6m drills at 5.95 and the sprayer is set at 29.75. Works a treat.

When we got the first nh system, I copied the headings from the jd system and put them into the NH to keep us all on tbe same lines.
 

e3120

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Northumberland
I think speed of covering the ground can be an issue. It does drift a bit, but if you're drilling pass by pass you don't really notice. But when you come to just drive the tramlines you could be over several hours of drilling (and drift) in 20 minutes.

I have tried to follow pre-em lines with the rollers the next day, but it was just a faff of endless nudging.
 

Huno

Member
Arable Farmer
If you are going to waste your time sitting in the cab... dont bother with RTK.. just use the nudge function... if a robot is sat in the cab... buy rtk ++
 

clbarclay

Member
Location
Worcestershire
I haven't bothered drilling tramlines for years. I put the tramlines in with the spreader or sprayer wheelings. Then again, I never had a drill with pre-em markers.

Rangepoint does drift, but the biggest errors in it are when its not fully convereged. If you pull into a field and start work the moment it claims to be converged then it can appear to drift quite a bit for a few minuets after that. It's convergence did improve a lot though about 5 years ago after a firmware update and signal change. It still helps to drive into a field and then check the machine over (e.g. check for blocked rows) to give it a moment to settle before steering with it.

I have done a lot of drilling doing every other pass across a field first and then filling in back across the field. When doing that I don't nudge anything the first time across the filed, then when filling in I watch where the drill is between the previous rows and nudge it accordingly as I go. It only needs a 5cm nudge about once every half hour when filling in to account for drift, so long as you don't loose signal under trees.

When spreading, it very rarely needs more than 30cm nudge to line the tractor up with previous tramline wheelings. If there are no visible tramline wheelings then I just drive with no nudge.


Having said all that, I am mostly on RTK now and it is so much easier to live with. I have moved away from trimble for that though, so have my own base station and each receiver cost less than a year of rangepoint subscription.
 

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