gps &accusteer

[dfarms11]

Any thoughts which system is the best?

[seedsman]

Short answer is: It depends!

Depends on whether you want visual guidance or hands free guidance.

Depends on your needs/expectations. (Do you want to plant row crops or just broadcast fertilizer. How much room for error is acceptable)

Depends on dealer service. (Some excellent products on the market with very poor dealer service or no dealers within hundreds of miles)

Depends on your topography. (If you have lots of hills or rough fields, you will need terrain compensation for better performance)

Depends on your willingness to pay. (Price varies from a couple of thousand for a light bar to as much as $30,000 per tractor for a RTK system)

Depends on your location. (Some correction signals are less accurate the farther north you go)

Depends on whether you want to move the equipment between equipment. (eg from one tractor to another, or to a SP sprayer and to a combine)

Depends on whether you want to make field maps.

Depends on whether you like to watch your performance on a screen.

Depends on whether you are willing to pay for a subscription to get a better correction signal.

Depends which direction you like to drive. (WAAS correction is twice as accurate driving N/S as it is driving E/W).

There are 2 excellent forums to go to for more discussion.

http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/PrecisionTalk/index.html

http://dgroups.agriculture.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?webtag=agprecision

Also check out this web site that has all of the companies currently marketing products:

http://onlyguidance.com/index.html

In case you are interested, I bought a Trimble Ez-Steer system last spring. It is quite affordable and easy to move to different equipment. I found the system worked very well, but found the WAAS signal drifted too much for my liking. So I purchased a Starfire reciever, which has terrain compensation, along with a SF2 subscription. I now usually get better than /- 4" accuracy, which is as good as you need for pull type equipment. But now I can buy similar technology from Trimble with their T2 unit and an Omnistar subscription. The JD Universal system is somewhat similar, but I think slighly more money.