Ultra-precise RTK equipment allows you to drill, spray and plant with amazing accuracy. And we’re giving you a chance to win a Leica mojoRTK or Leica mojoGLIDE with Leica Quicksteer worth nearly £10,000 for free

What is RTK?
It’s all about accuracy. Ordinary guidance and steering systems that rely solely on the GPS satellites give you a typical accuracy of 15-30cm. Paying extra for a correction signal from a separate set of satellites boosts that to 10-20cm. But a so-called RTK base-station, which uses a small 5ft-high base station to give you a further fix, boosts accuracy to just 2cm.
  
Do I need that much accuracy?
Not for cultivating or rolling, maybe, but it means ultra-precise, ultra-straight drilling, no missed bits and really good auto boom shutoff with the sprayer, not to mention brilliantly accurate potato and veg planting.

Equally important is the lack of satellite drift. If you pull out of a field with an ordinary GPS receiver, you won’t be able to return to exactly the same point a day or two later. With RTK, you can go back to exactly the same spot a day – or a year – later.

I’ve heard there’s a new type of network RTK coming on to the market. What’s that?
It gives the same accuracy as regular RTK but does away with the need for a base station. Instead, it takes its correction signal from nearly 100 base stations around the UK and beams that to the tractor receiver via the mobile phone network. Leica’s system is called AgNet and is on stream already.

What are the pros and cons of the two sorts of RTK?
Base station RTK allows you to run several tractors from one base station but the radio signals are blockable by trees or buildings. Network RTK means no base station to move about so is good if you want flexibility. However you can only run one tractor with one subscription (though prices are easing downwards)

What is Leica Geosystems?
It is a giant Swiss company known principally for its surveying equipment, but increasingly for its precision farming equipment too. It has sold about 1200 RTK units into agriculture 

Who sells Leica equipment in the UK?
It’s a firm called Soilessentials based in Angus, Scotland. It was started in 2000 by a couple of technically-minded farmers who wanted to do their own GPS soil sampling and get into variable rate application.

Since then it’s grown into a major UK precision farming player, offering Leica Geosystems’ mojo guidance equipment and support as well as soil sampling and crop sensing.  To date, the firm has set up some 40 RTK stations in the UK, with many more in the pipeline.

Soilessentials also provides full back-up for the equipment. In fact the Leica RTK system has a built in self-diagnostic system called Virtual Wrench. Press a button and it wills end a text message back to base.

Now win Leica precision farming kit Soilessentials is offering a choice of two prizes,
depending on what GPS equipment you already have.
Each of these is worth about £10,000.

* If you already have a an autosteer-equipped tractor, you can win a Leica mojoRTK

* Or, if you don’t already have autosteer (or any other GPS equipment), you can win Leica’s new Quicksteer assisted-steer system plus its new mojoGLIDE non-RTK
guidance capable of 10-20cm accuracy.