GPS kit, with its scope to cut time and inputs, is high on many farmers’ shopping lists, though the range of equipment can be baffling. Some of the latest kit was on display at last week’s Precision Farming Event at Peterborough.

TOPCON

Agco’s announcement a couple of weeks ago that it has struck a marketing deal with Japanese GPS giant Topcon means it now has access to Topcon monitors, autosteer and RTK systems. MF’s new big (270-370hp) MF8600 tractors will have Topcon monitors and the company reckons that 60-70% of these models will be sold with autosteer fitted. In fact autosteer is now available on all Beauvais-made tractors, too. Topcon equipment will still be available separately through Precision Decisions in York.

ALTUS

The latest RTK base-station to hit the market is this US-made Altus APS-3 model sold through Aberdeenshire firm DGPS4U. It can run off two internal batteries for eight hours and has an internal SIM card to allow it to log on to Ordnance Survey positioning data sent over the mobile phone network. Total cost of transmitter and receiver is about £16,000.

Raven Smartsteer assisted steering system, sold through Patchwork Technology,Monmouthshire, is said to be easier to fit than its predecessor, with no need to remove the steering wheel from the column. It’s also quieter when it’s in operation. It can be paired with the Raven Cruizer display unit to give an affordable, easy-to-install system.

TRIMBLE

Trimble‘s AgGPS FmX receiver has dual GPS receivers in the one unit, so it can track the position of both tractor and trailed implement separately. That means that if the implement receiver detects that the implement is sliding (say, on the side of a hill) it will tell the tractor autosteer to compensate accordingly. Clever stuff, though it does mean two sets of subscriptions to Omnistar HP or Starfire 2 unless you use a base station. Potato growers on undulating ground are expected to be possible customers.This unit is also marketed by New Holland as the FM1000.

DEERE

Deere’s GreenStar £1022 parallel tracking lightbar is a manual steering aid aimed at smaller arable and livestock units. Ready to use in under 10 minutes, the system is compatible with Deere and other makes of equipment and uses the new StarFire 300 EGNOS-only (ie, free-to-use) receiver, which is mounted on the vehicle cab. A series of LED indicators, each with a resolution of 10cm, helps keep the driver on the straight and narrow It can also be used with Starfire SF1 (±30cm) and SF2 (±10cm) paid-for correction signals.

CLAAS

Claas GPS pilot guidance systems now come with this colour Outback S3 terminal, with 8.4in screen and 1GB internal memory. It’s a more sophisticated unit than its predecessor, says Claas, with the scope to store multiple A-B tracks for different fields, border lines for field size calculations and marker flags to identify specific areas.